Little Things
I originally wrote this post a year ago. I thought new subscribers might be interested so hope you don’t mind me sending this weekend bonus read.
When I was young, I loved notebooks, stationery and diaries. The Good House Keeping Diary and the Dairy Book of Home Management were eagerly awaited. Not that I had aspirations to be a domestic goddess of any sort, I simply liked to be informed and organised. There was information to be gleaned in these record keeping books: facts and figures, hints and tips, recipes and pages for accounts. I kept my first set of accounts aged 7 and have pretty much done so ever since. I loved my little pages keeping track of pennies at home, though sadly this did not translate into an aptitude for mathematics at school.
The filofax was a cultural phenomenon in the 1980’s and how I loved mine - a bulging black leather package of pages, ready to be filled with appointments, shopping lists and notes. There were London transport maps and tiny coloured maps of central London, which I adored. I walked my way around the city with those. In fact, I found those very maps in box of memorabilia when we moved recently. I’d kept them for 40 years and didn’t have the heart to put them in the recycling, so they went off with my charity shop donations instead.
I’ve had some gorgeous diaries over the years, though latterly they were never used for anything other than notes. All my appointments are stored with my electronic calendar, so that my husband and I can co- ordinate our comings and going and use of the car. There are no useful hints and tips, no quotations or little sketches or recipes. Its clinical organisation at its starkest.
I have discovered something this year, however, that has bought me joy and will continue to do so for the next 12 months, Lia Leendertz’s Almanac for 20251. How did I not know about this before? It’s a seasonal guide to the year and includes tide timetables, moon phases, astronomical events, recipes, meditations, diagrams and illustrations and so much more. Firmly rooted in seasonal changes, it has everything a girl could need! Well, this girl anyway; no longer rooted in the city, or needing maps, but wanting a way to navigate the year with nature as a guide. It’s an absolute joy and along with a note book is all that I need to organise and inspire my writing life.
I’d heartily recommend it.
See ‘Lia’s Living Almanac’ on Substack