Pam Alison Knits

To those of us with similar obsessions, the changing seasons of life bring their own nuances to the question of what we are going to take with us, both on an everyday level and on our travels.

I innocently believed that finishing the nine-to-five working life would finally remove that conundrum of fitting everything I wanted with me into a small everyday carry, but it turns out that’s still an issue. As far as stationery goes, my heart still yearns for an A5 page, my handwriting desires a lined page with spacing in excess of 6mm, and my inks demand good quality paper. My beautiful Enny shoulder bag, love of my life, has other ideas. Enny thinks that even a personal Filofax is a touch too much for her sleek good looks, but she’s got the perfect slot available if I can just find the right little planner. Much though I like to keep Enny happy, nothing will persuade me to downsize to a pocket Filofax.

My initial idea was that I could simply indulge my long-term A5 fantasy and when I wanted/needed to carry it with me I would undoubtedly also be carrying some kind of tote or backpack. The A5 William Hannah made a lot of sense and I’ve been quite happy with it. However, life is not predictable and just a few short weeks have proven to me that there will be times when I don’t have a second bag with me but I do want some kind of diary/notebook combination. Clearly this is going to need some further consideration.

And then there is an increase in travel to contend with. We sit today midway between two quite different breaks which introduce the need for a robust traveling setup, especially if I am serious about wanting to keep to some kind of writing routine when I’m away from home.

I started off very minimal for a recent a 3-night stay in London: just my William Hannah A5 notebook and a case with three pens. This was rounded out by an equally minimal tech carry consisting of my iPhone 16 Pro which covered all my communication, entertainment, and photography needs. This is probably the lightest I will ever pack and it entirely suited the kind of trip we had planned. On reflection, it was a little too sparse to keep me feeling comfortable in my own skin, but it was a good jumping-off point for future adventures.

The three pens were inked with Cross blue-black, Scribo Notturno Viola, and Pilot Iroshizuku Yu-Yake. The Waterman/Scribo combination is my main planner pairing at the moment. I’ve been using the Cross Century II to write my journal pages since I ran dry both of my Onoto pens in the days leading up to the trip. The Beverly/Yu-Yake combo was just for fun.

The A5 William Hannah leather cover held my planner pages for January-April plus a decent amount of lined paper for journal entries and any creative writing, though in the event that didn’t happen. I’ve been using the brand’s own Weekly Planner Pages – a two-page spread providing pretty good space for plans on the dated right-hand side and jottings/tasks on the left. I tend to cover and re-name the sections on this left-hand page to suit my own taste because I’m not using the sheets for weekly reflection/review. I don’t name the sections the same way each week, it varies according to my mood and, let’s be honest, which stickers I want to use.

I pre-dated three sheets to use as journal pages. I did journal on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but on Monday I ran out of steam a bit. That’s not a problem, I just wrote twice as much on Tuesday morning when I was home again. Because it is easy to pull a sheet out of the notebook to write and then slot it back onto the discs, this really did prove itself a good option for keeping up with my journal whilst away from home.

As the William Hannah paper is A5 and I’m keeping my journal in the Silvine exercise books which are 9″ by (a hair less than) 7″, it’s easy to stick the A5 page into my main journal without any need for tedious trimming.

The main downside to this setup is that I tended to leave the whole notebook in our room most of the time where I usually like to have at least my diary/planner pages with me when I’m out and about. I don’t necessarily think I’ll need to refer to them, but it’s that element of feeling “comfortable in my own skin” coming into play. With this in mind, I’ve been experimenting with a mock-up of an A6 version since I came home because it will fit in my Enny. Since A6 disc-punched pages can be archived back into the A5 setup, splitting the diary into a separate book feels less of a faff than it does with the Filofax rings system (though it’s perfectly possible with that as well, you just need to trim a corner off your personal size pages to fit onto the A5 rings).

My upcoming trip will be different in that I can pack a little more expansively and I’m hoping I’ll carve out some time to keep up with the creative writing challenge I’m currently taking part in. I’m seriously considering including my laptop this time. Going phone-only in London was quite a pinch and, although I have an iPad which should be a good halfway house for travel, I’ve never quite gelled with it. I’ve got it charging at the moment so I can revisit it with my current needs in mind and see if it is worth experimenting with.

Experimenting is, of course, the name of the game when you’re navigating your way around a “new normal”. For a slightly nerdy brain like mine, there’s a lot of fun to be had in working out what does and doesn’t work in any given situation.

For transparency, I want to point out that William Hannah are currently winding up their company and one of the reasons is that they are no longer able to source the beautiful paper they have been using for their printed inserts. This is a sad state of affairs and I’m glad that I had invested in a stash of lined A5 paper and a few A6 inserts throughout 2025. I shall continue to enjoy their leather covers and gradually introduce other papers as I run out of the William Hannah versions.