After some thought I managed to work out where I might have bought the 'perfect' notebook for my work back in 2008. I narrowed it down to two shops in London, one on Devonshire Row opposite Liverpool Street and another on the Holloway Road near where I used to work. I was in London yesterday for a meeting about my difficult third chapter (which I'm told is reasonably good... but I'm not convinced, all I can see is a mess), so I decided I'd visit these two shops, however my day did not go quite to plan and I never got to the Holloway Road stationers, and when I got to Devonshire Row Crane Stationers were no longer there - just a row of empty shops.
I rang Holloway Road shop and explained my predicament with regards to the paper in particular, and although they were not sure what make the notebook was or if they still stocked it, but they said if I took it along with me they would see what they could do. So that will be a job for my next trip to London.
As a precaution - because my current notebooks are almost used up - I went into WH Smith at the train station and went to pick up one of their 'ok, but not great' notebooks, and found a label on the front saying the paper is 70gsm, which means they have downgraded it because I am sure the one I have is 80gsm. So I left it on the shelf and ended up with the New Statesman, the London Review of Books and the Independent's daily mini paper. Which is just as well because the train was delayed...
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
In Search of the Perfect Notebook
It seems many people who need to use, or want to use, notebooks - I mean the paper kind not the computers - is not really satisfied with the one they have got, and are therefore always in search of one which is better suited to what they want. I am no different. I wrote a few months ago about the notebooks I need to use - of all the notebooks listed the most important notebook I use on a daily basis is the one for my PhD research.
My requirements are: A5, casebound in a hardback cover, good quality paper which takes fountain pen ink and pencil well, I need lined pages, the notebook must lie flat when opened, and for bizarre reasons know only to myself and my archiving needs, the notebook must have a red cover.
I have tried making my notes directly onto my laptop but this just does not work for me - I need the feeling of pen or pencil on paper to process my thoughts - so I use the notebooks. I am currently using a WH Smith own brand notebook, which is ok, but the paper is not as good as I would like - some inks feather and bleed on it - but it does its job in most cases, but I'm still on the search for a better notebook, and I'm not that keen on the shade of red.
Over the last few weeks I've been writing the third chapter of my PhD, and I expect this notebook will be used up in the next few days as I struggle - and this chapter really has been a struggle - to finish the first draft. This academic year has been difficult for so many reasons and this chapter should have been completed some months ago. This time last year I was on target, now I feel horribly behind. I am having to write huge stretches of the chapter longhand before typing them up because I cannot seem to be able to work out what I want to write on the screen. This is both time and notebook consuming.
After I finish this notebook I will use up the few remaining pages in my Seawhite of Brighton notebook, which I stopped using when I realised how much I need lines. It is actually a sketch book because Seawhite of Brighton are an art supply company; it is a great notebook, I like the cover, and I like the thick pages, but I really do need lines. So I need to find something else.
I know all the paper aficianados out there are shouting 'Clairefontaine', but have you seen the price? I go through these notebooks too quickly to justify spending over £7 per notebook, and although I agree the paper is great for fountain pens, I do find the ink takes a bit too long to dry on this paper - and if my thoughts are flowing I need to get them down and keep going, not wait while the page dries before turning it.
Yesterday I discovered I did once have the perfect notebook. Searching through a pile of Poliakoff plays I found one of my old notebooks from my MA. It seems I filled this book up with terrifying speed in the British Library whilst doing some research on Irish writers broadcasting on the Third Programme in the late 1940s and early 1950s: it is full of pencil scribbles about dates and times and content of broadcasts made by Irish writers, copied from piles and piles of archive copies of the Radio Times. I flicked through the notebook and realised what a good book it was - the paper was smooth but not slick, it had lines, the cover was a nice shade of red and had a smooth texture, it opened flat. I'd only written in it in pencil (pens are banned in the BL) so I needed to find out if the paper was up to the worst behaving inks I own. I found a page with a small amount of space took it to my desk and tried the inks.
It was perfect. But where on earth did I buy it? There is no brand or identifying marks on the cover. Are they still made? The search begins...
My requirements are: A5, casebound in a hardback cover, good quality paper which takes fountain pen ink and pencil well, I need lined pages, the notebook must lie flat when opened, and for bizarre reasons know only to myself and my archiving needs, the notebook must have a red cover.
I have tried making my notes directly onto my laptop but this just does not work for me - I need the feeling of pen or pencil on paper to process my thoughts - so I use the notebooks. I am currently using a WH Smith own brand notebook, which is ok, but the paper is not as good as I would like - some inks feather and bleed on it - but it does its job in most cases, but I'm still on the search for a better notebook, and I'm not that keen on the shade of red.
Over the last few weeks I've been writing the third chapter of my PhD, and I expect this notebook will be used up in the next few days as I struggle - and this chapter really has been a struggle - to finish the first draft. This academic year has been difficult for so many reasons and this chapter should have been completed some months ago. This time last year I was on target, now I feel horribly behind. I am having to write huge stretches of the chapter longhand before typing them up because I cannot seem to be able to work out what I want to write on the screen. This is both time and notebook consuming.
After I finish this notebook I will use up the few remaining pages in my Seawhite of Brighton notebook, which I stopped using when I realised how much I need lines. It is actually a sketch book because Seawhite of Brighton are an art supply company; it is a great notebook, I like the cover, and I like the thick pages, but I really do need lines. So I need to find something else.
I know all the paper aficianados out there are shouting 'Clairefontaine', but have you seen the price? I go through these notebooks too quickly to justify spending over £7 per notebook, and although I agree the paper is great for fountain pens, I do find the ink takes a bit too long to dry on this paper - and if my thoughts are flowing I need to get them down and keep going, not wait while the page dries before turning it.
Yesterday I discovered I did once have the perfect notebook. Searching through a pile of Poliakoff plays I found one of my old notebooks from my MA. It seems I filled this book up with terrifying speed in the British Library whilst doing some research on Irish writers broadcasting on the Third Programme in the late 1940s and early 1950s: it is full of pencil scribbles about dates and times and content of broadcasts made by Irish writers, copied from piles and piles of archive copies of the Radio Times. I flicked through the notebook and realised what a good book it was - the paper was smooth but not slick, it had lines, the cover was a nice shade of red and had a smooth texture, it opened flat. I'd only written in it in pencil (pens are banned in the BL) so I needed to find out if the paper was up to the worst behaving inks I own. I found a page with a small amount of space took it to my desk and tried the inks.
It was perfect. But where on earth did I buy it? There is no brand or identifying marks on the cover. Are they still made? The search begins...
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Browns
It may be late August, but it is still the summer. However, where I live almost all the fields which surround us have already been harvested and ploughed - the greens and golds of the peas, parsley, barley, wheat and oilseed rape have all gone, only the deep shiny green leaves of the sugar beet remain. Ten or twenty years ago I remember the farmers leaving the fields for weeks, even months, after the harvest, and I can recall playing as a child in the stubble and pea mush well into the autumn months. Today it seems the farmers do not leave the fields for more than a few days before they start breaking up the earth and turning the soil.
We are now surrounded by varying shades of brown as the earth is turned to expose the dark moist clay soil underneath, before it dries to a different hue, and is turned again and again, each time the lumps of earth becoming smaller until the soil is ready for drilling and sowing for next year's crops.
This week I will harvest the onions in the garden and lay them out in the sun to dry. I will dig over the earth and sow rows of carrots for the winter. Soon the bright green shoots of the carrots' foliage will start peeking above the top layer of soil.
The brown of the fields surrounding us got me thinking today about brown ink in my pens. Brown is not really a colour people use to write - when they do actually write and not type, but that is another subject altogether - and I will admit that had it not been for my avid tea drinking habits, I would not have purchased a bottle of J. Herbin's Lie de The ink some months ago, and I certainly would not have thought about other brown inks. I do love Lie de The and have used it in two pens, and so far it has been my favourite ink in my silver-green Lamy Al Star.
I was undecided about the exact shade of brown I wanted to try next - Lie de The has beautiful shades of brown and yellow and green - and I was reluctant to buy random bottles of brown inks to find ones I liked, so instead I decided to buy a number of ink samples from the fabulous Goulet Pen Company in the US. I have now tried Noodler's Brown, Noodler's Golden Brown, and Noodler's Burma Road Brown, all of which I like, but I think I will definitely be buying a bottle of Noodler's Brown, which is a rich brown with a hint of red, and looks great in my Brown Esterbrook J. The ink and the pen suit each other perfectly, and the ink behaves extremely well on almost all the papers I have tried it on. I will certainly be trying some other browns - probably a few more from Noodler's and some from Diamine.
We are now surrounded by varying shades of brown as the earth is turned to expose the dark moist clay soil underneath, before it dries to a different hue, and is turned again and again, each time the lumps of earth becoming smaller until the soil is ready for drilling and sowing for next year's crops.
This week I will harvest the onions in the garden and lay them out in the sun to dry. I will dig over the earth and sow rows of carrots for the winter. Soon the bright green shoots of the carrots' foliage will start peeking above the top layer of soil.
The brown of the fields surrounding us got me thinking today about brown ink in my pens. Brown is not really a colour people use to write - when they do actually write and not type, but that is another subject altogether - and I will admit that had it not been for my avid tea drinking habits, I would not have purchased a bottle of J. Herbin's Lie de The ink some months ago, and I certainly would not have thought about other brown inks. I do love Lie de The and have used it in two pens, and so far it has been my favourite ink in my silver-green Lamy Al Star.
I was undecided about the exact shade of brown I wanted to try next - Lie de The has beautiful shades of brown and yellow and green - and I was reluctant to buy random bottles of brown inks to find ones I liked, so instead I decided to buy a number of ink samples from the fabulous Goulet Pen Company in the US. I have now tried Noodler's Brown, Noodler's Golden Brown, and Noodler's Burma Road Brown, all of which I like, but I think I will definitely be buying a bottle of Noodler's Brown, which is a rich brown with a hint of red, and looks great in my Brown Esterbrook J. The ink and the pen suit each other perfectly, and the ink behaves extremely well on almost all the papers I have tried it on. I will certainly be trying some other browns - probably a few more from Noodler's and some from Diamine.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
New blue pen for making notes on The Blue Book!
This is my most recent pen purchase. It is a 1940s Waterman 513 with a W-3 (mediumish) nib.
Contrary to the heading of this post I didn't buy it to make notes on AL Kennedy's new novel The Blue Book (published this week, go and buy it, it looks beautiful and is an awesome book). And it is very, very, blue!
I won't say anything more about it yet since it is a couple of days before it is in the shops - although I notice it hasn't prevented some newspapers from printing reviews of it, which I'm not reading because I don't want to know what happens before I get to the end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)