You know when you’ve found the perfect notebook, but you don’t know it’s the perfect notebook until you get home and you take out your perfect pen- the one where the ink flows at the perfect rate so you don’t end up with some strange ache you can’t describe on the back of your hand between your wrist and your middle finger that wakes you up at 2.13 am; the one where you feel you finally have a shot at writing like the man you pick your Indian takeaway up from, where the whole family admires how he’s written “Tikka Masala” on the receipt, and you explain learnedly to your children as they gather round that it’s probably because he’s studied Sanskrit?
I knew you’d understand.
The marriage between the perfect notebook and the perfect pen is hard to find.
What complicates matters more is when the relationship between you and your perfect notebook is long distance. When you’d first struck up a relationship, you were travelling quite a lot, and you took it for granted that there would “be another time”. That for sure you would be able to walk into any old bookshop again, waltz over and grab one off the shelf, where it was inaccurately placed between the school supplies and the envelopes and just take it. Just take it, because you could.
Because it was EASY.
So imagine, after years of famine and drought; after years of writing on the back of cicadas wings who’d become too tired to fly; on the labels of clothes your children had grown out of SO DESPERATE WERE YOU to find that same feeling again, that when you walked into your local bookshop that you just drove to! The one next to the sushi shop with the five-minute park outside that is your local and there she was.
The Composition Notebook. You bought all five because never again would you take this moment for granted. Never again would you be the person who assumed there would always be Just One More Page.
Loss of access to stationery will do that to a girl.
Let me take you back:
I was walking with Tania, my friend, in Birmingham. It was early. I wanted to look around. Tania wanted to get her steps up. We walked through the mass of boobs and bums that only Birmingham can provide, making comments like “Aren’t they cold?!”, where every person coming towards you makes you look feel an accidental perve due to the intentional nature of where their clothing choices draw the eye. And with one final shouted instruction from google maps we were there: Waterstones.
The Sound of Music came on in the background, and the hills were, indeed, alive. Tania and I parted ways and set to work. I consider buying the drink bottle with the hare on it, that was quite random for a bookshop, but then again, I do really like hares. My book choices were piled high. The shop was multistory, so we burned calories as we made it to the checkout, but we made it.
The next few moments played out as predicted. I placed a book down. Thud. The nice man behind the counter scanned it. Beep.
Thud. Beep. Thud. Beep.
And then for a brief moment— a pause.
I placed my hand atop my notebook, take a long breath in and look into the sky (which was actually the ceiling of the shop, but they’d done a good job with the display, and it was lovely).
“Isn’t it just so SATISFYING?! “I breathed out.
Beep.
Exiting the shop, Tania burst into a mountain of tiny snorts.
“I think you made that man’s day. What with your tone and your ‘satisfying notebook’’.
You know when you do something and you don’t realise that you are doing something, so innocent are you, until it’s pointed out?
But I will say that it seems appropriate to have turned my notebook purchase into a potential Only Fan’s moment for stationery.
The placement of the hand. The tone of appreciation. The subtle lingering known only to a person who really appreciates the quality of paper.
I mean, let’s face it. If anyone will get it, it will be the man behind the counter selling books. A man what had dedicated a good chunk of his life, even if he only worked part time, to serving lovers of good covers like me, who understand a book not just to be a book but an EXPERIENCE?!!
I mean, I would do it all again if I had to.