Why I'll always need another notebook

I first identified the condition when I missed a train because I was browsing the Waterloo station branch of Paperchase. After that, I’d only have to see a shop called ‘Enveloping Love’ or ‘Why Quibble ’Bout the Scribble?’ and I’d lose all sense of time and financial constraint.
Posh shops were the deadliest. For who can resist smoothly sliding drawers full of rainbow-coloured, virgin sheets of paper, just calling out for a Papermate? Or beguiling stacks of notebooks embossed with flowers, birds, trailing vines…
Seemed such a shame to write in those at all.
So my own stack grew. It now covers half the floor of the spare room. When others who share the house grumble, I point out that I could be stockpiling Louboutins instead of eye-catching stationery.
Then someone gave me a beautiful, glossy black notebook with richly gilt-edged pages and silk, tasselled place-holder. Tasselled. I mean, come on! That was too good even for the floor, so it went into a chest of drawers, cocooned by a Christmas jumper. I might use it one day, if I find a pen sleekly worthy of its pillowy pages.

Impulse buys
I probably crossed the Rubicon from mild affliction to hard-core addiction when I brought home a miniature, acid-yellow notebook as an alleged gift for a friend’s little girl. On reflection, I worried that the padlock clasp might be too fiddly, so decided to keep it for myself – even though it’s also got a cartoon snake on the front and is a long way from the serious, Moleskine-touting image I should (probably) be cultivating.

Notebook nirvana
The Works has been my salvation. Not only can I feed my habit there without breaking the bank, but I can also extol my thrift in bulk-buying lots of other stuff alongside the notebooks…
If a therapist asked me where this all started, I’d say it goes back to the fashion at my all-girls school for customising ring-bind work folders with cultural icons of the day. While most of my classmates plumped for pop stars, I collected stills from Star Trek and glued them ever so carefully to the front of my folders in a paper and paste patchwork. Then I took it a bit further and laminated the folders because I had to stand at a bus stop in the rain.
However, I reckon the colourful results we displayed to each other in class replaced the individualising accessories banned from school uniform – jewellery, belts, scarves, make-up. (Miss Price used to stand at the school gates, point and holler, ‘you there? Just no!’). So maybe because I’ve always taken a minimalist approach to most of the latter (and Louboutins), as an adult the decorative notebook became my default fashion statement.
Well, it’s a thought.

Then, on one visit to The Works – strictly to browse, you understand – I found a notebook covered in a William Morris design of lemons!
‘No!’ I thought, recalling my Jenga stack in the spare room. ‘You must resist! You can do this!’
But who was I kidding? As the Borg in Star Trek will tell you, resistance is fairly futile when you’re actually yearning to be sold a lemon on the front of a notebook.
Reader, I bought it.
It’s now on the pile.
And one day, I may even write in it.