Pam Alison Knits

On a glorious sunny weekend in early May, I hopped on the train down to London to attend a meet-up of Filofax enthusiasts arranged by Steve Morton a.k.a. “Mr Philofaxy”. It’s a long while since I spent any time in London itself; when I visit the pen shows I tend to stay a little outside and just travel in to the show venue. This time, I booked an overnight stay in the East End so I could take in some stationery shops and visit the VE Day commorative poppy display at The Tower of London.

I’m afraid my overwhelming feeling about the stationery shopping in London was “Why bother?”. Compared to the rural city I call home, the shops struck me as surprisingly unwelcoming. There was no pleasure at all to be had in shopping, and the concept of browsing seemed to verge on being against the law! I visited two smaller shops which are devoted to stationery/art supplies in the theatre district. I regularly see both recommended to visitors from overseas, but my personal recommendation would be “Come to Norwich instead”. In one of the shops, in particular, there were so many staff members just standing around pointedly watching everyone that it made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. The stock was impeccably curated, but instead of feeling I could take my time and pick out something special to bring home, I made a half-hearted circuit round the shop then quickly headed out of the door. The other shop was actually more relaxed and I did feel comfortable ambling around it, but it didn’t really have anything that I can’t get closer to home. It had more stock of everything, and a few brands I don’t generally see, but nothing which tempted me to buy.

Sticking with the Filofax theme of the weekend, I also checked out the stationery departments in two Oxford Street department stores. Filofax has a small but solid presence in John Lewis, and I hoped I would be able to check out a few Filofaxes I haven’t seen before in real life. I have long been on the hunt for a blue Filofax and hoped they might have the navy Lockwood or the midnight blue Original, but now I’m hooked on the personal-sized versions all I could see were A5 binders. I was forced to conclude that John Lewis is the same whether it’s the Oxford Street branch or my local one. Selfridges, however, should have been a different story – we don’t have one locally and I know members of my family rate it really highly. For me, it was another shop where I didn’t feel comfortable and I wondered if it was something to do with visiting on my own – did I come across as some kind of outlandish freak who is clearly up to no good? I did manage to buy something there – they have a Montblanc concession and I asked them to check if the modern converter would fit my 1989 fountain pen, which it did, so I bought it. I also picked up a bottle of ink which I didn’t really need, but I did need to feel that I was taking something back home from my trip. However, I didn’t feel that they had any real knowledge of, nor interest in, the fountain pens as a specific niche product in their line. I thought they would have been more comfortable if I’d been asking about a ballpoint, or a leather bag, or even a bottle of perfume.

Luckily, to balance the bad shopping experiences, I had a fabulous time at the Tower, chatted with visitors from New Zealand, the USA, and Canada, and had a lovely stroll in the early morning sunshine taking photos of the poppies. Then there was the meet-up, which was the whole purpose of the trip, and which was immense fun.

Eight of us met up for a meal and a good chat about planners and how we use them, our personal likes and dislikes. We swapped information and shared our knowledge. There was a strong bias towards older, pre-loved binders which it is generally agreed were better-made than modern binders. This shouldn’t really be a surprise as the world now is geared to mass-production of mediocre products which only need to last as long as it takes us to get bored with them. Okay, that’s sufficient cynicism for one day. For my part, I love hearing stories about the Filofaxes someone has owned since the 1980s and used, perhaps with a long break whilst digital media reigned supreme, then come back to. As far as owning them goes, I am not personally drawn to binders from the heyday of the brand because they are often rather tired and, being a sucker for colour, I am put off by the predominance of black. I would probably snap up such a binder if it had been salted away and never used, but they are never in pristine condition. If you did come across such a relic it would cost a small fortune. Colour, frugality, and a perverse determination to prove that new products don’t necessarily have to be poor quality keep me on the side of Filofax’s more recent offerings.

So, after good food, good conversation, and a shared interest had made for a very jolly afternoon, I returned to Liverpool Street for the journey home, slightly disappointed that I hadn’t found a nice blue binder to bring home with me, but very satisfied with my trip. I also had a head full of ideas. Where a meet-up like this, around any hobby or pastime you care to mention, is really helpful is that it allows you to look at how other people approach the interest, and to decide if there is more you could explore. In this instance, hearing everyone talk about how they haunt eBay looking for any old binders on sale led me quite quickly to the purchase of the personal-size blue binder of my dreams.

I didn’t immediately start searching, but after a week I took a look on eBay, and then on Etsy, but I finally settled on a personal size vista blue Filofax Finsbury being sold on Vinted. I have long loved this shade of blue (which is very close to the colour of the sky in my Tower of London photos) and I looked hard at this version of the Finsbury when it was released in 2022, but I was in my A5 phase. Now I have the binder in my hands, I am even more in love with the colour. It is not too pastel, nor too deep, it is not too green and it is not too grey, it is not too bright, nor too muted. It may potentially be, for some people at least, just a little too pretty, but I can do pretty. I was very impressed by the Vinted seller who managed to get this purchase to me within 48 hours of me placing the order (and I ordered it on a Saturday) then included four colour-matched washi tapes which I adore.

I am setting up this new binder to replace my Holborn as my everyday carry for Quadrimester 2 (June-September) 2025. That largely involves putting in the next 4 months of my page-to-view diary, and swapping the other contents across from my Holborn. Hardly an onerous task, but I’ll write more about it – and wrap up how this current quadrimester has gone – as we move into June. Together with my two dedicated Filofax A5 notebooks which cover my retirement plans and my writing endeavours, I am looking to the Finsbury to help me navigate what promises to be an exciting period of my life. We have a major restructure going on at work, and this 4-month period could see some life changes that I wasn’t necessarily expecting so I’m keen to see how this plays out across the pages as I fill them. I think I’ll be needing the cool, calm, positive vibes this beautiful blue binder brings to me.