Poet-in-Residence Journal: Avro Heritage Museum, Woodford, Cheshire (March-September 2026) Part 2

My First Tuesday at Avro Heritage Museum

The Dairies

The director then left me in the competent hands of the Head of Archives. We went around the room pulling out folders with labels such as Anson, Nimrod and Avro 504 on them.

            “Where are his personal effects?” I asked, when we continued to the library room where a round table stood in the centre, under a flood of skylight.

He turned to look at me, “What do you mean?”

            “The raw materials,” I said. “Letters and…”

            “Ah,” he interrupted. “We have his diaries, if that would help.”

I thanked him and followed him over to a computer — one occupied by a member of staff. A volunteer in his seventies looked up from his desk and greeted me. He began closing the files he had open on the monitor.

            “You can have my chair and computer,” he said, peering over his spectacles. “I have some work to do in the library anyway.”

He pulled himself up, his face bright with kindness. “I will tell you the password to log you in whenever I’m not here,” he said.

Seconds later, he pointed to the screen again and told me which files to open. He watched me click with the inflexible black mouse until a folder with the title A.V. Roe’s diaries opened up.

            “Is this helpful to your cause?” he asked.

I told him yes and thanked him again. I watched him cross the archive floor, tall and upright, with one shoulder slightly higher than the other, until he vanished behind the library door.

The room went quiet. The men — six in total — worked away — guardians protecting a legacy that was so close to their hearts.

I adjusted the chair and made myself comfortable before opening the first diary.

1^st January 1925. I was taken aback by the barely legible calligraphy and the sparseness of words. He had written under every date, a single identical line describing his day at work. The line, which I cannot include here, briefly mentioned the time he started work, the location, and the time he ended.

The month of February was the same. I began to think of reasons why someone like him — with very few words — would insist on keeping a diary. He never missed a day. There were entries under every date, yet not much was said. I laughed, thinking of the great diarists, Samuel Pepys and Virginia Woolf, and realised I was doing so aloud.

The men turned to glance at me. One asked what I was laughing at.

I replied, “He was not a very good diarist. I think he should have stuck to aviation.”

They nodded encouragingly, and I felt perhaps I was being too quick to judge this legendary figure. Perhaps my doubts were coming from a place of fear. Maybe I was worried that I wouldn’t find what I needed to create the poems I promised to deliver at the end of the residency.

I closed 1925 and moved to 1901, to a chronological order, to where I should have begun in the first place. On opening 1^st January I was suddenly hit by the sound of a foghorn and the deep smells of the ocean. The diary before me spanned two weeks and spread across two pages. The writing was more legible and prolific. It was so profuse that it strayed into dates, like someone inspired.

Image provided by Wix

I felt a sudden connection. He was sitting on the deck of a steamship writing in his diary, and I was

sitting in an enclosed room reading over his shoulder one hundred and twenty-five years into the future…

To be continued...

The story continues Sunday 17th May. Thank you for reading. 

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