Am I buzzing that niche market button yet?
Soon I will be preparing a Knicker Drawer Note Book for a one-legged lurcher owner living in Haltwhistle who grows cauliflowers, eats road kill, and whose hobby is sculpting miniature figures of past British Prime Ministers out of green melted candle wax. I won't know where to begin!
I chose this gentle art of notebookery to end the year, because notebookery is how I intend to start the year.
And it's a better choice of subject than Lynne Truss.
Look, I know I'm a bit late here, but I was prompted to remember her ungenerous and unkind responses, because today the year ended very neatly when I received a round robin. By email!
I obviously don't receive the type of round robin that Truss receives.
I don't find round robins upsetting or annoying, and I take no slight from them that needs vengeance. Not at all. Quite the opposite. I loved reading the round robin I received today. For the end of 2012 it summed up death (it was inevitable), life (a million things left undone), loyalty (living in two countries can't be done, but we do it), sorrow (I have to be grateful), resignation (I'm on a quest for immortality) and joy (I danced in the chip shop with the doctor).
What I found from my round robin was not boastfulness or achieving children - although they certainly were in it, and well done Jem - but I found ordinary common-all-garden triumph and despair; deaths and failures, impending horrors, and tiny tragedies we humans live through, stated or squished between the lines, and from which we annually bounce, suffer, endure, then paste over again with stiff lips and determined smiles, finding humour, strength, or achievements as we go.
I'm delighted the round robin came today. I was touched by all those states, and happy to be remembered, and not resentful at the once-a-year. I'm glad you're here, alive; I'm glad that Jem got the result, even though it's taken him ten years; I'm glad Em's graduated, even though she had to leave the country to do it; I'm sorry to hear Bushka died (but wow, was she old); and I thank you for the info that divorce is not on the agenda, just in case I put my foot in it.
Sure, we can judge the human being who sent the round robin by the trusty Truss-o-meter, and they'll probably score just below toilet paper (used). But to me, you round robin people are both singularly unique and so completely human, you make me glad to be alive.
Come to think of it, I could probably make you the perfect Round Robin Writing Note Book.
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