In Anticipation of Moleskine Gratification

According to Moleskinerie (the blog that never ceases to dissuade me that my life will only be complete once I have one of each type of Moleskine in each of my residences and my place of work), in order to brighten up the dull, depressing days of February, from next month I will be able to buy coloured Moleskines. Sensational stuff, I know, given that those neat, black covers and the creamy, smooth paper are the main identifying points of a Moleskine. They will also have a new mini size (the smallest is currently pocket-sized, although too big for my feminine pockets), and I know that I will end up buying at least one.

I'm not quite sure from where I acquired my stationery fetish (and in particular, my notebook fetish) but one of the high points of my youth was going into my father's office and being able to raid the stationery cupboard. Sad, perhaps, but true. Similarly, one of my earliest memories was going to Gibert Jeune, a series of Quartier Latin bookshops and stationers in Paris, when I was about four, and being allowed to choose a selection of pens and some posh notebooks in which I could create my own "books" that had surprisingly ambitious titles and plots like Sunshine and the Coral Flowers. That was before I discovered Creative Writer, though...

Even now, although Moleskines remain my notebook/diary/DIY travel guide of choice, par excellence, I am frequently tempted to cheat: Rhodia, for example, does a nice, little, squared, tear-off notepad that I keep by my bed for when I have a Eureka! moment, and I have a slim Apica notebook that I don't use but was too pretty not to buy. I always wanted a Smythson notebook with their pretty, leather covers, silver-edged pages and cool titles like "Me, Me, Me" (a red notebook) or "Blondes, Brunettes, Redheads" (a navy blue address book) but a) they were too expensive and b) the pages are very thin and not ideal for use with a fountain pen.

Perhaps this was really why I used to keep a diary, as well as travel scrapbooks, catalogues of cool places I liked, random lists, bad poetry I'd written, and so on - I liked to buy notebooks and all of these activities gave me the excuse. Since the acquisition of my mini-laptop two years ago, I write less and less manually, which is a shame because give me a Waterman and a smooth-textured notebook and I could while away happy hours. The bitch was typing it all up onto my computer later for ease of reference and editing...