Tuesday

Giving a Knicker Drawer Note Book as a present?

The only gift for you to have some fun, before you pass it on to its intended recipient!

There are many ways to dress up your book ... some of the following ideas have been given to me over the years as family and friends have got together and enjoyed the collaboration in a one-off moment on a day of celebration.

Giving a Knicker Drawer Note Book as a present?

Into the first page write the name of the new owner in the style they love - calligraphy, floral, crayon, 19th century ex libris - simply enjoy drawing the design of their name that you feel matches them best.

Slip between the pages your personal note - whether it is a thank you for the friendship; your gratitude or sympathy; your expression of love; your confession (and apology); a ticket to the cinema; your invitation and request; a hand-drawn map to a secret treasure...

Place any little extra items in envelopes inside the book. (Ah, can I tell you about the young man who hid the engagement ring inside?)


Press a favourite flower into the pages. (And if you can't find the real flower, cloth and silk are awfully handy.)

Pin or sew a special charm to the binding or to the fabric inside.

Slip between the pages your IOU for an evening out (or an evening in).

Ask friends and family to sign pages and contribute their messages of goodwill, farewell, celebration or greeting.

Ask the kids to draw pictures inside before giving, creating your own time capsule of childhood. (Then save it, just in case one of them becomes the next Tracey Emin.)

Write inside the ingredients of your favourite recipe. (And add a promise that you'll get together to share the eating!)

Enclose packets of seeds into gardening books; a love poem into a love book; a bag of buttons into a crafter's book; the bag of wood screws so beloved of the carpenter...

Enclose into your gift book the treasures you know the new owner loves to collect (buttons, stamps, paper clips, masonry nails, bits of string, newspaper clippings, leaves, beads, ribbons, postcards, shells... come on, we've all got a hoarder's gene somewhere.)


Write inside the lyrics to a favourite song.

Clip inside the book your favourite photographs of the new owner.


Then Voila! You've changed your Knicker Drawer gift book into the most extraordinary personal moment!

Hearing how you've changed your gift to adapt it to the new owner is always a delight to me. Tell me what you did when you see me at Stall 13.

Or drop me a message and I'll add your twist to the list.

Happy Christmas and New Year 2019-2020 xx

Thursday

Workshop

Note Book for the hero in the workshop...






or the shed,






perhaps gone to the garage,




maybe the yard,




or the special tinkering place by the back of the kitchen door,








How can we not be charmed by your passion in the industry of it all?

Tuesday

Nicola










Just like the book, lost and found in the Library.

Monday

The touch of a note book

I recently became a little obsessed by Ellis Rowan, the Australian illustrator who created a beautiful repertoire of birds, butterflies and insects, on paper.

More precisely, I became a lot obsessed by Ellis Rowan's note books. I wrote to the National Library of Australia, inquiring about the note books she used.

They didn't think I was demented. Not at all! They sent me photographs of MS 2203 (calling it a scrapbook, not a note book). MS 2203. They explained it was made of 'very simple nature', most likely bound in buckram cloth, about 23 x 27 cm in size, filled with newspaper articles about Ellis Rowan and her art, with some correspondence.

They pointed out, if I'm really keen, I could hire a local researcher to examine the scrapbook.

I considered it. But I probably wouldn't know what I was seeking. The touch and feel of the book. The weight of it, balanced in the hand. How the bound papers slip or move or shift as their weight lifts and settles them under the finger touch as you turn them. The handling, rough or smooth, of the bindings, the spine, the edges, the covers.

I believe that the sensory experience of a book we hold in the hand - one that whispers, 'use me, write in me, enjoy me!' is truly a moment of intimacy. Me, and You, delightful note book, together! In this moment, holding this book, the one I'm looking for to contain all my most important treasures - times of life, remembrances, significances - I'll know whether you're staying with me, or whether I can't give to you all the things in my head.

Perhaps Ellis Rowan thought the same? Perhaps she picked up each book, for notes, sketches, cuttings, doodles, jottings, and weighed it a moment in her hand, touched the texture of the paper, the strength of the binding, and knew this was the one, to hold butterflies.

Saturday

Question amongst the Celebrations!

For my ears, it's always a cause of celebration, scooping up the ephemera of the person who has shaped a cultural life, whether in music, literature, performing arts, politics, or for being old after being young, and having made so much to make it into significance.

So it is with Tony Benn. 

Blimey, writing journals from the age of nine? And I bet those early entries aren't like My rabbit died. Mummy put him in the garden. I hope Flopsy is eating lettuce. Forever.

I bet they were all Studied British Parliamentary history this morning. Must find out about this fellow, Erskine May.

But I have questions. What are the notebooks like? Is the paper thin, or lined? Are the note books thick or thin? Big or little? Card covered or cloth? Are Tiny Benn's books spilled over with milk from morning cereal? How did Junior Benn handle his favourite note books? Did Teenage Benn doodle rude pictures in the back pages? And, as he grew up and changed, where did he write, and what of himself did he leave behind - around, between, above the words?

I might be nosy parkering too much in the intimacy of the writing experience, but really, I'm fascinated by the memories each note book contains. The physical experience of handling and maintaining that, over time, allows us to peek a little into a person's habits. Your note book is keeping a record of you, even when you don't know it.

Because where we hold a book, tells, over time. Pages folded or torn perhaps say, we were handled roughly. Or do they tell us, we were handled, constantly, sometimes too quick, such was the frustration of that young writer!

The cover, holding rings of mugs and cups and bowls, then says to me not, I was a note book unloved. But, I was always there, on the desk, to hand, invaluable, always a partner, a reader for a writer's thoughts.

Thomas Babington Macaulay's library at Wallington, Northumberland tells me a thing or two about this accidental memory-making.

He's the Member for Parliament who went off to India. He's known for the 'Minute' - the instruction that education in India was to be through the language of English. That's another story, but what fascinated me was the Macaulay who would scribble notes in books, and then bleed on them. (Possibly not intentionally.)

Such was his enthusiasm for early rising thinking - and possibly being provoked beyond calm disposition - he would scribble notes while shaving in the morning. Victorian shaving is a bit hit and miss when you're in a temper, and consequently Thomas, and his note-making, suffered.

So, among the whoops and celebrations for the archives saved for the nation, can I ask you, dear archivists, to add a line or two, to tell me what the pages say? Not the words, but the use, the holding, handling, treasuring or trashing that goes on, every time we pick up our note book.