This January a new diary is required. I had a student year and a half one for July 24 to end of 25. A really nice inTEMPO Firenze Italian soft leather cover one. Angie needed one for work so best used there really. I’d written three entries in it since July! I decided that a lovely Italian made Legami day to day blank dated A5 sized journal/diary would be fit for 2025 purpose instead. It would ideally suit the Mle 35 Musette Man Bag size I carry around daily. Well, not so much ‘carry around’ nowadays as I have become ‘Grand-F-Rather Adopt the Recluse Role’. Okay, having said, ‘when I used to carry around daily’, an A5 format would have been ideal for the amount of day to day thoughts I could write and include. Now it is just a dip into the bag to get certain familiars still. So grabbing the A5 full page day to day diary and beginning to write would have a blank stage staring back at me with nothing to put down in earnest as a play/performance blossoming. ‘Got up, did stuff around the house, went to bed’.
A diary is based on daily activity or future planning. A journal double up? Well not really. I may write a weekly one off journal inclusion on a thought or three. But most thoughts go into my blogs nowadays. And any planning for the year will go into My Dream Map journal. Blog write ups are not for journal inclusions. Like this written now. So A5 size is not really practical. Top of page? Angie at work, Angie off. Me? Indoors. Me? Still indoors. Breakfast? One of three choices. Porridge, toast, muesli. Lunch? One of two choices. Emmental cheese sandwich, Cheddar cheese with Branson pickle sandwich, Dinner tonight?…Blah, Blah…. You get the picture. Nothing to write about.
And so. Back to the Musette Mle 35 infantryman bag. The most visited blog of mine, hundreds on hundreds of visits every year since 2018, very high on the Google find list and…. Not one single comment on the post. Visited by the fans of the bag, not WP bloggers and therefore probably don’t read my blog at all. Have to laugh. At least visitors get to identify the bag from the film. I read much discussion on it in various fan threads. People are fascinated with Dean Corso and the contents of his bag.
The Ninth Gate bag which is, as said, carried by Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) in the film, is a French Infantryman bag from WWII. It is now considered both cult and iconic. Very rare indeed. And I have owned four. Two I gave away (brother and son in law), one is falling to bits and the other is my daily bag as mentioned.
So, due to its rarity status, it got me thinking. Why not put a vintage and equally as rare Filofax diary inside! So, I thought ‘Aaaaah! My Filofax OC7/8’. I saw my Filofax once on the internet at £180. Shockingly expensive. I paid 50p from a charity shop. You can’t do that nowadays. Charity shops have internet sites now with rare items. Anyways…I can buy a new diary cheap insert again. One with half a week’s view in a tiny 9.5 x 17 cm space. ‘Perfick’ as Pop Larkin would say. ‘Life’s Perfick wherever you go’. The small little daily space can have Porridge, Cheddar Cheese and Branson Pickle Sandwich in it all year long.
PLEASE TAP ON PHOTOS BELOW TO ENLARGE. CHEERS.
Filofax was a very important part of life to those that owned them back when. Still are I suppose. In my case I am a huge, but not now committed, fan of the Filofax format. It was important to carry a small 12 x 8 cm pocket sized one all through my nursing career. Loads of relevant information inside. A similar sized medication pocket prescriber book went with it too. Bound together with a stretched elastic Velcro band.
So, the old vintage vibe that I love and cherish can be 2025 revisited. This past year feels all techno with recording my songs on the Apple Mac system. Could never use a techno diary system either. Pen and squint when writing with ink is Perfick. So, it will be good to go and get all old fashioned again.
Gray Summers 