There was method in my madness when I chose to move into my personal-sized Filofax at the end of November 2023 instead of waiting like a good girl for the beginning of 2024. It gave me a whole month to use my chosen option of page-a-day diary and establish how that was going to work for me. What I’ve discovered is that I really like the personal size paper for my appointments and tasks for the day, but I’m still gravitating towards A5 sheets for notes, especially as I seem to be in an idea-generating phase just at the moment.

When I set up the Filofax Holborn, I put in 3 months of daily pages and a reasonable wodge of lined paper. Beyond appointments and tasks, daily pages have space enough to jot down an odd sentence or reminder which is the most I find I need as I’m out about my daily business. Should the need arise, I can supplement that with sticky notes (I received a fun pack from my Secret Santa) and be perfectly prepared for all away-from-the-desk requirements. Therefore, the next iteration of my 2024 set-up involves removing the lined pages and adding another 3 months of daily pages. That means I’ll be carrying 6 months at a time, turning the Holborn into more of a ring-bound diary than the more general “file of facts”. There are a few lists which I find useful to have in my diary (the breakdown of money I need to set aside each month for bills, the days that Christmas falls on for the next few years so I can work out my availability for festive events, the codes for my printer cartridges etc). There is space for these towards the back of the binder.

When it comes to carting about my planner, the personal size is bliss. It slips neatly into my work bag and increases the number of handbags I could potentially carry on non-work days. This choice is largely unhelpful since I generally gravitate to carrying my Longchamps Le Pliage backback in my leisure time and an A5 fits in there fine. My usual process, when heading out for a long or short trip, is to try all the other options in my arsenal then end up in the Le Pliage. Just as I try other work configurations and come back to the big, heavy backpack which is a complete nightmare to get on and off when sitting down on the bus, but is the only comfortable way to carry the work laptop back and forth.

Notes, together with expanded plans for weekends and holidays, are gravitating into my A5 William Hannah notebook. That choice came about as a happy accident. I’d received a bottle of Diamine Imperial Purple at Christmas and decided its first outing should be in the Cross Beverley. To begin with, I wasn’t entirely happy with the combination of purple ink and medium nib as it left my handwriting feeling a little short and plump. I find purples are often inclined to emphasise the porous quality of any paper, laying down a thicker line than I want. Then, without thinking, I grabbed it to capture something I was pondering and the paper to hand was some William Hannah. Within a few words it struck me how wonderfully this paper was coping with the pen and ink. That shouldn’t have been a surprise because I know it’s brilliant paper, but sometimes you forget how good something is if you step away for a moment or two.

My currently inked pens list for January consists of:
Lamy LX Rose Gold inked with Diamine Oxblood – just like Writers’ Blood, this leans a little too brown for my taste, but we’ll see how it goes
Cross Beverly inked with Diamine Imperial Purple – enjoyable on some papers, inclined to gush a bit on others. Side note: I’ve just found out Cross don’t include a final ‘e’ in the name of this pen, so it’s ‘Beverly’, not ‘Beverley’ as I’ve previously spelled it
Montblanc Slimline with Montblanc Amethyst Purple – a good, solid combination I’m using extensively in my Filofax since it’s the pen I keep in the pen loop of the binder. Works really well with Filofax diary paper
Waterman Hemisphere L’Essence du Bleu inked with Montblanc Midnight Blue – I’ve just written this dry and I’ll be filling it with a different blue ink tonight. This combination has been used extensively for writing my journal entries

In truth, having two pens filled with purple inks plus one with a burgundy makes this month a trifle unbalanced. Then again, it’s been good to see the difference between the two purple inks. To my eye, Imperial Purple is very much a true, clear purple whereas the Amethyst leans a bit redder. In fact, if you wanted to be very matchy-matchy, the Amethyst Purple would probably match the Cross Beverly perfectly and, if I were ever to splash out on a bottle of that colour, I’d probably be inclined to pair them up quite frequently. As it is, I only have cartridges and the Montblanc cartridges don’t fit Cross pens, so it’s a moot point.

I’m getting a lot of pleasure from the pens and paper shenanigans this month, they are helping to ease me through the dim days of year.