Moleskine Love

Lots of people I know have embraced technology totally, even people of my own age and older. I am not talking about ‘the youth of today’, they all seem to have been born with the instinctual knowledge of how to play Modern Warfare on the XBox.

Not only do lots of my friends use their phones for phoning people and the now ‘normal’ texting. They use it as their organiser, calendar, camera and to take notes with. This might sound normal to you. To me it is akin to witchcraft.

I cannot get used to this multi tasking of devices thingy, despite owning a very nice iPhone that Jason strong armed me into getting, all the time muttering about my Luddite ways.

I like it more than I thought I would.  I now use it for phoning, texting, some photos and as an excellent alarm clock.  I do not use any of the rest of its functionality though, including Twitter, despite being a prolific Tweeter (and sometimes Twatter). I do not use it to search the internet for stuff, I have uploaded absolutely no apps. I have no music on it at all. I am hopeless.

I did try googling something on it once, in a fit of desperation, but I hate the way the page doesn’t fit the screen and you have to slide about all over to read everything. It makes me feel slightly sea sick.

The thing I hate most about it though is the idea that I might want to use it as some kind of notebook.

I don’t know why it fills me with horror, but it does.

A notebook is perfectly good for taking notes with, is my immediate thought.  And by that you will gather that I do not mean a small laptop. I mean an actual, physical bunch of paper between two covers.

I know, I know. I am practising for old ladyhood well in advance of my time.

This weekend I packed light. I got everything I needed for two days in one reasonable sized hand bag.  I felt very chuffed with my ninja packing abilities and allowed myself a warm glow of superiority as I watched people trundling up and down Euston with cumbersome luggage.

When I was lurking about somewhere or other I overheard a lovely conversation that I wanted to write down. I reached into my bag only to find I had not packed a notebook.  I was bereft.  I hate travelling without pen and/or paper.  It’s a bit like being naked.  ALL WRONG.

I knew I could have fiddled about for forty minutes with my phone, cursing and sweating, and smearing my fingers over it, but the thought just made me sad.  I was right by the British Library by this point.  They have an excellent shop (where they are currently offering 10% off an ‘Electronic Beowulf’, which made me laugh immoderately).  I dashed in to purchase a notebook.  Surely they would have a notebook facility in a library, however high tech.

They did.

Frabjous day.

I am, it will not surprise you to know, rather fussy about my notebooks.  I do not like novelty notebooks that have cutesy pictures of kittens on, or scented pages, or little locks and keys.  I find them irritating.  They are pretend notebooks.  I think I feel about them the way most alcoholics think about social drinkers. ‘Waste of bloody space.’

I like a good, stout notebook.  The word ‘serviceable’ is key to my notebook purchasing activities.  I prefer them plain on the outside. I also like them plain on the inside (there are exceptions to this, but not many).  I cannot write in straight lines without ruled lines to guide me, but this hinders me not. I often write my notes sideways and upside down anyway, so I’m much happier with blank pages.

It can be quite hard to find such sensible note pads, particularly if you don’t want spiral bound or exercise books, which I don’t.

For a long time I used to buy myself lovely notebooks and then not write in them. I was sorting out a cupboard one day and found that I had about ten, all beautiful, none written in.  I had a word with myself.  I realised that when I bought a beautiful notebook, I felt I had to write beautiful things in it, and because I undoubtedly would not be able to write beautiful things in it, I simply didn’t write anything at all.

It took me a long time to get over this.  I am now firmly of the opinion that it doesn’t matter what you write (or where), as long as you write, and the more you write, the more comfortable you will be with your writing.  You might guess this from the rambling, unscheduled, mind flitting nature of the blog.  Partly it is like this because this is what my brain is like, but mostly it is like this because of the above revelation.

In my opinion, writing works a bit like taking photos. If you take hundreds of photos, some of them will turn out to be exactly how you imagined they would be, and all will be well.  If you take one or two, there is so much riding on the expectation, they will probably disappoint you.  You can sieve for gold after you’ve collected all the gravel.  You can’t sieve for any if you don’t have anything to sieve in the first place.

A peculiar metaphor I grant you.  I probably won’t send it to the metaphysical poets’ society, but you get my drift.

I also think how excited future generations will be, if my writing ever becomes famous, and they discover my higgledy piggledy notebooks.  It will afford future academics endless hours of fun boggling over what ‘Fucking Hell! Subs.’ means at some deep, philosophical level, when it is actually a note to self that Brownies need me to sell a kidney again.

Anyway, back to the British Library shop. I faffed about, disregarding numbers of things with pictures of Alice in Wonderland on, or ones that had specific labels for things I was supposed to do with them.

Right at the back of the shop was a stand of Moleskine notebooks.

I REVERE Moleskine notebooks.  Ever since I had a total infatuation with Bruce Chatwin in my late teens, I have coveted a Moleskine notebook.  Chatwin wrote all his books and travel writings in Moleskine notebooks.  I don’t quite know why I find this fact so alluring, but I do.

It suddenly dawned on me that in all my years of reverence and notebook purchasing I had never owned a Moleskine notebook.  I examined my conscience. It appears that a) I had been put off by the price, which is indeed a little steep for what is essentially a bunch of paper (about £13 for an average sized notebook, although they start at about £8), b) I was daunted by the ghost of Bruce (would I live up to his exacting standards), and c) I generally didn’t have the funds when I came across them or had the funds but didn’t come across them.

Reader, I married him.

I bought myself a plain, black, soft bound Moleskine notebook with blank pages inside.

It felt like the height of decadence.

It was the height of decadence.

I ripped the covering off in the shop and rushed off to write notes in it immediately.

Imagine my joy when I fumbled in my bag for a pen, and pulled out my favourite, violet inked fountain pen.

My image of myself as an eccentric woman of letters was complete.  It would only have been bettered if Bruce himself had come sweeping up the library steps and gallantly escorted me to tea.

Sadly, as he is long dead, this is unlikely to happen.

But it’s nice to dream.