George Orwell: Egg man (koo koo ka joob)

I've been riveted by the latest installments in the Orwell Diary blog, in which the Orwell Society posts one diary entry from George Orwell's 1938 journal every day as a blog-post. Since mid-October, the journal entries have been from a rented villa in Marrakech (sic), and Orwell's journals have grown increasingly obsessed with the number of eggs his hens are laying (not many). Every time I see an entry like this: "21.11.38: Two eggs," I crack up.

30.11.38: Two eggs.
29.11.38: One egg.
28.11.38: Two eggs.
27.11.38: One egg.
25.11.38: Two eggs.
24.11.38: One egg.
Cylinder of Butagaz gave out yesterday. That makes 5 weeks. It has supplied pretty regularly 3 gas-jets (one of them higher candle-power – I think 60 – than the others) & a fourth occasionally.

Where will it end? The suspense is killing me!

30.11.38: Two eggs.

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PaulR

The “One Egg” diary entries make be feel better about my writing.

In the same way that learning that NASA estimates that professionals average 15 – 30 lines of code per day, depending on the complexity of the project…
bryanchamp

My favorite comment left on the George Orwell blog after about three days of egg reports was “dude sure likes eggs”. Awesome.
Anonymous

With the victory garden how-to you just posted, for a second I thought it was less funny and more sad.

But it’s more than a year too early to be WWII food shortage related.
lectio

Four eggs good. Two eggs bad!
Tritty

“crack up” haha nice one cory
margraz

For more substantial entries (and meals) you might try Edward Lear’s diaries.
johnthelutheran

George Orwell is also twittering, under user name georgeorwell.
Anonymous

I always thought he was a great socialist writer but it turns out he’s an eggsistentialist?
medra42

What a neat little project. I love these little peeks into the minds of iconic figures.
nanuq

Maybe his chickens started plotting against him. I’m guessing that he got a lot of the material for Animal Farm this way.