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I’ve recently started keeping a diary, initially as a travel journal, but I’ve made the decision to continue keeping a daily journal after managing to keep going for the duration of our trip with only a few days missed (but completed, just a few days later than intended).

My grandmother Nancy kept a diary most of her life, so I’ve a role model to look to there. It’s also nice to read about other webloggers (such as Roger Darlington) who are able to revisit a specific day in their lives with reference to their daily diary. It was – and is – great fun referring back to our travels to a specific day, not least sorting through the 1500 digital photos we took!

So, with the decision made to keep a diary, I hit on the problem my grandmother had, and hated, every year: Finding a nice book to write the diary in. Just when you think you find one, companies change designs, shops go out of business, preferences change, or books just don’t live up to your expectations. Of course everybody has different preferences for writing. I’ve rediscovered fountain pens (sounds odd, but I’ve not used one since I was a student, and had forgotten how enjoyable the physical act of writing could be with a decent pen, rather than a duff biro), but still had the tricky issue of finding a suitable book.

All the stationers were visited, but I just couldn’t find one that was ‘just so’, ie. nice paper, a nice cover, enough pages (preferably lined), an elastic holder, and even a book mark, and all with the right “feel”. My travel journal met most of those objectives, but I couldn’t find another one like it, nor did it really have the right paper. I could almost see my grandmother smiling in sympathy.

Enter my friend Adam. Whilst staying with him a few weeks ago, he showed me a Moleskine notebook he had found in a shop on Upper Street, Islington. There’s also a sizeable history to Moleskine, which makes for interesting reading.

At last! A notebook that met all of my criteria, but unfortunately the shop didn’t stock notebooks with enough pages in them. A paltry 60 page affair, and I’d been hoping for 100 at least.

No fear. The web is here. After a bit of surfing, and not a little more help from Adam, Mojo London stock exactly what I want. And to add to the decent price, they’ve also just e-mailed me to say my book has been dispatched first class post today, so I should get it tomorrow.

Now, I just need to catch up on the last few days entries…

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2004 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.