Stationery junkie

My ideal weekend would include at least half a day of staying in bed and writing, by hand, in black gel ink, ready for transcribing onto the laptop later. The combination of notebooks, new pyjamas and toast is especially potent. But there has to be the prospect of contrast later on - people, good food, a dvd, a walk, a ride in the fields - otherwise it might begin to feel like another working day. It being unofficial is part of its success. The pyjamas and toast are important. These are notes, not finished sentences (I tell myself, but usually they're transcribed onto the computer unchanged).

I'm a stationery junkie. I can't pass a stationery shop without buying paper, pens, blank books with pretty covers.... but all I really write in is these moleskine notebooks, which are slim, flexible, with bendy covers and stitched paper that can be bent and contorted. They're good for travelling with. I've written half a book in them on a beach.

Bruce Chatwin made the moleskine famous in the late 20c. Reputedly he bought 100 of them for his Australian trip. The French makers went broke in 1986. An Italian paper company bought the brand and started making the notebooks in 1998. C buys them for me in packs of three and I gobble them up. I always have one in my handbag, and another by the bed. The new ones aren't as wonderful as the old, though. They're a dark grey rather than black. They lack the leathery texture of the covers. And they no longer have a page in which the owner is invited to write their name and address and fill in an amount (in dollars) to indicate reward money for notebooks lost and found.