Ever since its inception Mass Observation has relied on volunteers writing down their thoughts, feelings and experiences to help record everyday life in Britain. Without our writers, our Mass Observers, Mass Observation simply doesn’t exist, especially in its current form. Yes! We are still going! In fact, there are currently 500 people signed up to write for the archive.  

‘Meet the Mass Observers’ aims to shed some light on the people whose words help make up the archive.  

Clare (J7229) has written for Mass Observation since the 1980s. Here Lily Moreno-Sheridan spoke with her about oral history, ordinary people, and how Mass Observation has turned a journalist from interviewer to interviewee.  

Why did you want to write for Mass Observation? 

CLARE: Well, I’ve actually been writing for it, I can’t even remember when I started writing for it. It must have been something like the early 1980s. And because in the time of Dorothy Sheridan and Professor David Pocock, who was there at the time as well, I had a collection of his letters. I can’t remember how I got involved. I think it is because– and I’m going off topic a bit already– but I think it is because as a journalist (I’ve never been a news journalist, I’ve always been a features journalist) it’s very much Agatha Christie, when she did her autobiography and called it, Come Tell Me How You Live. And I’ve always regarded that as my kind of journalism, that it’s very much about that. I’ve done a lot of talking to other people about, you know, what their lives are like. And I still do that. I’m an oral historian as well as journalist. So I still do that. And I always find it fascinating.  

…I remember once one of my old school friends, not that many years ago… when I was in an art gallery with her and I was talking to the attendant and she said to me afterwards, she said, ‘you’re always talking to people, aren’t you? And asking them questions?’ And she said, ‘I remember you doing that when you were 12.’  

And I think for me, Mass Observation gives me the chance to turn the mirror on myself and turn the microphone on myself because having done that for so many years– interviewing other people– it’s really nice to put down my thoughts and my opinions and to feel that I’m contributing as well to Mass Observation Archive.

What’s nice with [MOP] is the idea that the tables are kind of turned and if I’m talking about my views on certain things and sharing it and knowing that in the future. It’s a huge resource for researchers and people to find out how people felt; thought; what life experiences they had; all of those kinds of topics, For me, it’s kind of really nice and self-indulgent.  

LMS: Yeah, absolutely. That…after, you know, being in that line of work, finally getting to be on the other end of it.  

CLARE: That’s why when I– because I used to teach at a university as well up until just before the pandemic, it was about six weeks before the pandemic when I left that was actually because I thought, I loved my students, but I want to get my own life back and start thinking about my experiences. They were writing me features about their lives or columns about things that had happened to them, as well as going and interviewing other people. And it just came to a point where I thought, you know what, I really would like to just, A. get my life back, and B. think in terms of me and what I got to write about or writing about some of my experiences. So Mass Observation is really all part of that. 

What has been your favourite Directive theme to respond to? Why? 

CLARE: It’s hard to pinpoint one in particular, although I will, because the ones that I particularly like are the more abstract or personal ones. So, ones that are about meals; or about smells; or about… there’s one about forgiveness; sounds… And for me, those are nice because they’re easier in one way and they’re more personal. They’re more personal than being asked, about, Coronavirus. I did actually write a diary about that for four months. 

But again, that was very personal. Whereas being asked about sort of bigger issues I find like Gaza, which I know is one of the more recent ones I haven’t responded to so far, is such a bigger issue somehow.  

But what I would always try and do is personalise it… 

LMS: It’s more like a set answer rather than your own feelings about something, like, a smell.  

CLARE: I think personally, I would always probably personalise even the bigger topics. But when it’s something like smell, and one of the favourite ones I have had, I have to say, is mantelpieces.  

LMS: I love reading that one because it’s just such a good question. It’s such something that like, I would never think to ask. And it’s such a perfect example of what the Mass Observation Archive is it’s such a good cross-section of our culture of like ‘what’s on your mantelpiece?’ 

CLARE: Yeah, well, and I did very much, and I sent photographs of our mantelpiece because we’ve got three mantelpieces in our house and they are stuffed with things. I sent some photographs of the things that are on there because there’s one mantelpiece and it is just, it’s piece of art. It’s just grown over the years, because we just put things on that reflect our lives. And so it might be something from nature, it might be a pheasant feather that we found outside. It might be some acorns. But it might also be a little place setting from the Planters Club in Darjeeling that we have. And, you know, and it’s got cards and things like this. And nobody would know, it’s like poems. Nobody would know what they mean.  

And also because I had actually done a half hour radio program all about the mantelpiece, where I talked to other people about what was on their mantelpieces. And that was before this [directive] came up. And so I did a half hour program on the mantelpiece. I did a half hour program on the bath, and a half hour on the dressing table, things like that.  

And the ones that I really like, because they’re fun and they also, yes, they go sort of below the surface. So, you know, some people might have very pared back mantelpieces with just a carriage clock in the middle and two Staffordshire dogs on either side. But there is, there is so much to say about mantelpieces.  

LMS: Yeah, I mean, they’re more fun because you get to put your, fully your opinion without any outside kind of research. It’s all fully personal. So I get that. 

Is there anything surprising that has come from writing for Mass Observation? 

CLARE: Well, actually, I was just looking back over some of my answers to directives. And I think one thing that just came out was actually I can really sound quite cross or quite outspoken. Things I maybe wouldn’t say if they had my name attached to them. My husband was a columnist before he turned travel writer. I could never have done that because I could never have put my opinions or put my name to a written opinion. So I think because this is anonymous and you find yourself there, perhaps being a bit more honest or outspoken at times than you might’ve been otherwise. So that’s quite useful.  

You sit down with [the directive prompts] and that it can throw light on your own life. I think that’s one of the things, it does throw light on your own life. 

It is enjoyable. ‘ve missed the last couple I think. But it does give you an opportunity to sort of take center stage, really, and then just send it off and sort of forget about it and know that if it is used in the future, it will be anonymous. So you’re not going to be persecuted or laughed at for whatever it is that you’ve said. It is anonymous.  

LMS: Yeah, definitely… that’s a good response. I was kind of, with that question, I was kind of like, ‘I wonder how you would answer that?’ But yeah, that’s a good response.  

CLARE: It’s kind of, it is quite hard. I find it quite a hard question.  

CLARE: S, my husband, says that I ask probably too many questions.  

LMS: Well, but for you, it is, has been your job for a long time. So I think for you, it’s also elevated, I would say.  

CLARE: Yeah, but we do find it funny when, we were on a previous coach tour and we were joined– we were sitting at tables with people and we would be asking them about their lives and everything else, and they were not asking us one question.  

And so in a way, with Mass Observation, again, coming back to that, it’s just this idea that actually, you’ve got people asking very, very good questions. I think the questions on the directives are extremely good, but nobody’s interrupting you. And nobody’s a bit bored and going, ‘oh, right, okay’ you know, so you just let it go, let rip.  

LMS: Yeah, that is interesting. 

If someone was to read your writing in the archive, what image of you do you think/hope they would have of you? 

CLARE: I did find that a difficult one, actually, Lily, because when I started, when I looked at some of my responses to the directives, I thought, you know, I seem a bit sort of– what’s the word– not self-obsessed, but a bit too opinionated.

And at times I put some words out, I thought, well, I’d like them to think I was intelligent, observant, humorous. And then I thought, actually, they might just think I was up my own bottom or something, you know. So I really don’t know what image. And in a way, it’s as well not to think about the image that somebody might have, because that might get in the way of you actually doing it.  

LMS: Absolutely, yeah. The whole idea of it being, you know, anonymous… I would say from a reader’s perspective… (I’m not a Mass Observation writer)… and so from a reader… when I read people’s responses, I don’t know if I have images of people. I don’t know if, I mean, I would ever hold it against a writer to be [opinionated.] 

CLARE: Yeah, and somewhere in this room I’ve got some of my really old, going back to the 1980s or 90s responses. I’d be interested to look at those again just to see how I responded then. Because a lot of them, I would have done them, on previous computers and they were in the mists of time. They’ll be there somewhere in the archive. Sometimes I just send it off and then you don’t look at it again. You just think, “right, I’ve done that.” And like I say, I’d hope they’d think I was quite observant.

Are there any topics that you hope Mass Observation will cover in the future? 

CLARE: Well… I imagine you’ve covered most topics that I could probably suggest, but maybe one on ‘precious’, and you may well have done this. What objects are precious to us? And things that you hang on to for years. I’ve still got a black halter-neck dress downstairs in a drawer that I made when I was 18 and wore from the ages of 18 to about 27. It probably wouldn’t even fit my arm now! But why do you hang on to it? And again, I once did a radio feature about ‘precious’ and what objects are precious to us. It’s a bit like, if you’ve ever seen the film Citizen Kane, where Rosebud, and people try and work out what Rosebud is, and it’s this childhood sleigh, I think it works out at the end. But what do they say about you? I like those ideas again, the ones that are more oblique and a bit off the wall.  

[Referencing an earlier conversation] ‘Sigh’, you know, like, why do we sigh? How often do we sigh? Because we don’t notice that we sigh until we do it. Or do you start thinking about it? You don’t realise how often you do it and why.  

LMS: Yeah, now I’m going to be aware of it. 

CLARE: There are lots of very important issues, obviously, as well. I mean, I know there was one about, obviously it was a one-off about the death of the Queen and the Royal Family. 

Obviously when something like that crops up, and if, whatever happens, it’s happening at the moment, something like that, they are very important. And they can come out of the blue, can’t they, those topics? And they are very important. 

But there’s other ones that I think I, and I have to accept, I don’t really have very much to say on this particular topic, But then sometimes I’ll think, ‘I don’t have very much to say on this topic’, and then I’ll find myself typing away if I can find a way into it through something more personal. Like I say, with the pandemic, I wrote a diary for four months, and then I realised that it was getting very repetitive. But I was including other people’s emails and text messages and whatever, and anonymising them and that’s a very big issue, and I think that’s a really important topic to have covered. So something like that, that is, yes, really seriously important. But overall, I actually think that Mass Observation gets the balance right between the serious and the bigger picture, and then the sort of microscopic picture.  

Can you send us a photo of where you most frequently write your Directive responses? For example, your desk, your sofa. If you write on paper, what papers and pens do you use? 

CLARE: I do it here. So I’m always here on my computer. This is where I would do it. Yeah. It goes straight onto the machine, onto the computer. Yes, I can certainly send a photograph of that through.  

LMS: Yeah that’s really all I have for you. 

CLARE: It is very interesting. Like I say, being an oral historian as well, I remember once a fellow journalist saying to me, “I don’t know how you can bear it going out and talking to boring people about their boring lives.”  

LMS: But it’s not boring. And if it is, then it’s like, okay, but like, I just, I want to be nosy. I want to know what you do. It’s so interesting. 

CLARE: I wanted to be a celebrity interviewer. That was on a women’s magazine because I’ve been on a women’s magazine and I wanted to go back and be a celebrity interviewer. And the more I talked to so-called ordinary people, the more I realized how extraordinary people’s lives are and how it’s endlessly fascinating.  

Meet the Mass Observers is a new feature highlighting the people that make the work of Mass Observation possible. If you’d like to know more about writing for MO visit our pages on becoming a Mass Observer.