Field Notes
Image shows my hand writing treasures of the week. It was a challenge today: I'm packing to travel tomorrow and was wondering whether I would get the time to write a post. Already after a few weeks, I have got into the rhythm and I was feeling my fingers itching. In the end, after messing about for a bit and getting myself in a muddle, it became obvious that the thing to do was write the entry and post.
Friday 10th October 2025
Finally, I have some gel pens to write with. My excursion a week or two ago ended with the wrong pens - more challenging than it sounds for hand writing purposes.
But Tuesday was a great day (so was Thursday actually): two meetings were cancelled (the best kind of meetings) and my afternoon became available for a trip into town. After the essential visit to the hairdressers (I have a party on Saturday), I wandered round to the stationers' on the way back to the bus station. Me and the managers are now best friends. They found one pack of pens rooting through the under display storage drawers, and then ordered me another two sets.
It seems they're also going to stock Kaweco pens - established in 1883, the Sport (compact fountain pen designed for travellers) issued in 1911 and updated in - as a vanity project, it seems - in 1994. Currently, they're a thing, they may have been for some years, I've only just found out, but they are one of those things, like Moleskine, that if you know, you know. That is, you can spot a sister, fellow, writer at a hundred paces.
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I ordered one from my new friends, one of the things I like is you can get a cheapo plastic body or an expensive aluminium or steel body but the nibs on both are the same high quality steel: and I think inter-changeable across the range. I read somewhere that I should go for the medium, wide, nib for my hand writing (flamboyant)?
In my haste in the shop, I ordered the wrong model, but at less than £14, it's model that I'll be happy to carry about day to day unlike the Waterman that sits in its box on my writing desk when it's not in use. The new Kaweco is a pretty green and for fun, I ordered green ink cartridges. They will all be waiting for me, next time I am in town.
I opened my new 2026 diary today: Moleskine x Peanuts limited edition. I like the week to a page with a lined page opposite for notes. A couple of years ago I did away with a separate work notebook and reduced notes to that single A5 lined sheet for a week. I don't know if it has made me more ...
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... efficient but it's less weight to carry round the London Underground. I usually get the Classic with a black hardback cover but 2026 will mark my first full year of retirement, so I went for something a little more precious. Peanuts has lots of memories for me but I'll write about those another time.
My other purchase this week was Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a secondhand (pre-loved?) copy from We Buy Books in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, in the north of England via AbeBooks.co.uk. I've avoided Virginia but recently she came up in conversations about spontaneous prose and I decided to investigate. John Rogers has also done a walk tracing the journey in the book (two journeys, I think, Mrs Dalloway and Septimus Smith). The walks are through London, of course.
Coincidentally, I learned that Oliver Cromwell's body was kept overnight at the Red Lion, next door to where I work in Holborn, before being carried off to be hung, decapitated and various other indignities by the re-instated King Charles II. Apparently, though, the bodies were swapped and Ollie is buried round the back of our gaff!
Field Notes
Much better to get that out of my head and on to the page. As the little Peanuts bookmark included with the diary says, "Banish any worries by putting pen to paper everyday." You can see it in the image at the top of the post. Today was the first time I have knowingly used an Oxford comma.
References
Fantastic Tales of Bloomsbury - John Rogers (for the tale of Oliver Cromwell)
Walking a classic London novel - Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway - John Rogers
Previous Posts in This Series
On Rain before the Code - Friday 3 October 2025
On Transitions - Friday 26 September 2025
On Bringing New Audiences - Saturday 20 September 2025
On Liminal Spaces - Saturday 13 September 2025