August already!

First - a customer service announcement. Clare is taking richly-deserved time off. The UK office will be closed from 3-7 August and 24-28 August. No orders will be despatched during these weeks. By all means order away, and everything will go out on the Monday following. I (Stu) will be monitoring email and social from the mountain hideaway - so any problems, yell.

For most, time has been altered by Covid and the world’s response. March seems both only yesterday and a decade old.

The future is always unknown and feels even more so right now. Are things getting better? Getting worse? Who knows. I’m going to keep taking deep breaths and carry on regardless.

I’m writing this on the 30th of July, which means that I will be starting a new daily driver in two days. I get through a desk-sized book every couple of months. Sometimes it’s one per quarter, but more often two months sees one off.

I’m coming to the end of an Endless Recorder. Tomoe River is a joy for my fountain pens, and I take great pleasure in using big nibs and wet inks. It's gorgeous! It’s also the antithesis of neat, organised and efficient.

I have recently changed my daily layout. Adding in a timeline for planning/journaling the day. I’m therefore revisiting parts of the page rather than ploughing onwards. Wet ink, Tomoe River paper, and “revisits” makes for some interesting art, and some very colourful hands.

Bearing that in mind - what next for my daily driver? I have plenty from which to choose. Confidants from Baron Fig, Elements from Elemental Paper, Leuchtturm 1917, MD, Slate from Blackwing, Port West to name just a few.

None of the above.

This time, I’m going for a softcover from Rhodia. The paper handles my pens beautifully, but dries faster and handles pencil and rollerball better than Tomoe. I like dot grid and I'm a huge fan of the massive colour range. My eye keeps getting drawn to a fetching colour, called iris.

We do carry the Goalbook from Rhodia too, which fits my personal method pretty well, but I’m happy enough with the straightforward notebook. It does lack page numbers, but writing them in is not exactly a hardship, is it?

If you haven't tried the coated paper from France, you're missing out. I love Tomoe - (I never used to) but if I could only write on one paper forever, it would be Rhodia.