I have written a journal every year since I was Nine. I’m pretty sure they will not make it into literary history but I enjoy writing in them and looking back on some of the funny, embarrassing and memorable times in my life. Some things used to be so important!

This year I decided to make myself a deluxe leather journal. Practical, hardwearing but beautiful and would stand tests of time. It took me a while to put together a journal document for each page of the year and then to make it into booklet and section format but after that I had the joyous task of choosing what I wanted it to look like.

In the end I decided on a thick leather in spring yellow. The journal has 384 pages so needed a thick leather to be able to hold all that weight and the added weight I’ll add when I stick mini photos to the pages.

I chose to decorate the spine with the date so that in years to come I can have all my annual journals lined up on a shelf on display and then a little monogram on the front left corner with my initials.

As you’d expect the first page is personalised with my name and a quote I loved. Like many children of the 80’s I first came across this quote in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Willy Wonka said “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams…” but it was actually written in 1873. Here’s the full poem:

Ode

BY ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;

World losers and world forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world’s great cities.

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song’s measure

Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o’erthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world’s worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth..

I love this poem and the first part really does make me think of my children and the endless possibilities which are open before them as they grown.

I print all my journal pages from my workshop. I fold the pages into sections, press, cut and punch the the sections and then punch holes in the leather and sewed it all together using Crawford Linen Thread in two colours. I make a template for overbook I sown so that the holes are neat and accurate in the leather and paper. Sewing leather this thick is tough on your hands and it takes longer to complete.

I am completely in love with my 2019 journal and couldn’t wait to start writing in it. My first entry was about “the day Bad Cat ran away….” Don’t ask!