Saturday 15 December 2012

The Diary Has Landed


Through the letterbox this morning, in an envelope marked ‘FRAGILE’.  So I’m now available for bookings throughout 2013. 

Seeing Z's post just now has made me wonder whether I should reconsider my hidebound prejudice – I’ll probably have to next year, if the decline in SHOPS continues to outpace that of online services – but for now I’m comfortable with the solution that’s served me well for decades.  (It also keeps my memory agile, at least to the extent of having to remember where I left the damned thing.)  (And to be fair I don’t have that many appointments, unlike some people.)

It’s not ideal, I have to say – the weekend is scrunched up again, and there isn’t a weekly ‘notes’ – but it does have that ineffable modality of the tangible.  When I’m gone, these physical plastic- if not hide-bound volumes will continue to exist for scholars to pore over: as opposed to mere wisps in a cloud of electrons, to which nobody knows the password.

The other thing I used to enjoy about Collins diaries is that every day contained a kind of aphorism or quotation.  But this year, these seem to take the form of excruciatingly weak, failed, unfunny puns - pound shop cracker jokes -  for which you’d put a three year old into special needs.  ‘Dig down to find water and you’re doing well.’  I mean, honestly!  And that’s my birthday’s thought for the day, and one of the better efforts.  I may have to go through with a black felt tip.

 

 

 

7 comments:

  1. I might change my mind if I received a nice hidebound diary, of course.

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  2. Is a farmyard full of moo cows waiting to be milked a hidebound dairy?

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  3. Hide-bound or hidebound,Z? There's a difference.

    Richard, you'll have to do better, or worse, than that. The entry for your birthday (this is true) is 'One cannot find good baking flour for loaf nor money.' And that's a rib tickler. I have a year's worth of torture implements stored up here.

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  4. Well on that basis it's a good job time ends on Friday so you won't have to read that on Sunday. Has anyone said what time it ends? We have people round in the evening & it would be a shame if the planet goes pear-shaped before dessert.
    I hope your diary entry for Friday is: It's the end of a baktun, do not turn back.

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  5. Furthermore:
    how terribly strange that the end of time will no doubt, for us northern dwellers anyway, be seen through a Hazy Shade of Winter.
    Hang on to your hopes my friend.

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  6. I do like 'ineffable modality of the tangible'. Was that a quote from last year?

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  7. Nope - James Joyce, Mig, loosely adapted (and misremembered).

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