ON BEING TOO KIND TO BOOKS

I was always taught to be kind to books and to treat them with respect. A bit like elderly relatives. Don't fold the spine back, you'll break it, don't draw moustaches on the pictures of Noddy. Never write in the margins.

But isn't there something wonderfully subversive about defacing books? You can make your own wise observations then return them to the charity shop. Something profound, not too obscene. It's good to show your ignorance here. Try jotting 'over the top' with exclamation marks in the middle of Hamlet, or 'pathetic fallacy' almost anywhere. Poems are easy to notate with comments such as 'imagery!' or 'why not iambic pentameter?' But if you want really profound marginalia there's nothing better than the cryptic shopping list. 'Jam' for instance or 'quail eggs' will keep readers guessing for years.

That's why I've taken to buying paperbacks from Oxfam. I can make my own notes. What works, what doesn't. Is it a good story? How did she do that? Why?

Deep in pencil markings the novel almost looks more loved. And there's nobody looking over my shoulder asking me what I think I'm doing.

LOSING A GRIP ON REALITY

Isn't it reassuring to know that according to a recent survey nearly one in four people believe Winston Churchill was a myth and more than half think Sherlock Holmes was a real detective who lived in Baker Street?

This is great news for us fiction readers and writers. According to newspaper reports on the survey Britons are 'losing a grip on fact and fiction.' But isn't that what fiction is for? What's the point having it if you can't actually believe in it?

So I'm all for blurring the boundaries between fiction and (so-called) reality. Gandhi was produced from the fevered imagination of a film writer, but Wing Commander Bigglesworth lived and flew shaky kites in the south of England from around 1915 to 1964 when he was pensioned off from the RAF at the age of seventy. Heathcliffe is real of course. Richard the Lionheart is made up. Wasn't he in that cartoon about Robin Hood? And 47% believe Charles Dickens was a myth! In that case who wrote Mr Micawber? Perhaps Dickens was an invention of his own characters after all. Did Oliver Twist write a book called Charles Dickens?

The real irony though is that the highest accolade for a real person is to 'achieve mythical status' like Churchill and the highest achievement for a fictional person, like good old Sherlock, is to become human. Sort that one out.

TEST: Be honest - who did you think was real? Who do you wish was fictional.

Some writers obsess about notebooks - not me.

What about those really expensive ones that Hemingway and Chatwin used? At £9.99 for a pocket size notebook some of Hemingway's genius really ought to rub off on you. And they're called Moleskine, which isn't the same as mole skin though you have to admit they feel a bit like it - soft and warmish. So the feel is almost worth the price alone. And they do fit in an inside pocket, which is obviously esssential. After all, who wants to look conspicuous with a journal the size of the Domesday Book? It's just so vulgar, so Oscar Wilde.

But isn't there something pretentious about borrowing Chatwin's notebook? A notebook's a tool after all. It has to be practical. For instance, when it's full you need to put it somewhere to refer to later. Where would you put all those Moleskines? Don't they look a little serious when one or two of them get together, with spines like the reading room in the British Library?

So for a long time I've been using the good old WH Smith exercise book - lined, preferably with margins (for notes - obviously!). At less than a pound each they are a real working person's notebook - down-to-earth, dispensible, rugged, unobtrusive! You can write in them with a cheap biro or a posh pen or even a pencil. OK, they're a bit flimsy and they get ragged from too many months spent in the corner of a bag, but they are properly portable and get filled up in a month or two at the most so their time in the pocket is limited. You can go into any WH Smith (universal, you see) and buy four or five at a time and it makes you feel virtuous, because soon they will be filled with words.

But I was becoming disenchanted. Call me feckless. I'd sneak into independent stationers at lunchtime and ask if they knew where I could get a notebook with a biro included. There's nothing worse than scrabbling round for a biro or, worse, finding it's leaked into your pocket. I searched the internet late into the night for that elusive combination of looks, quality and price. Most internet goods looked like the journals of Victorian anthropologists. I secretly wished Smiths would do a version without lines. It felt freer. But they resisted.

Then one evening, when we were discussing inspiration, my friend Nick showed me the notebook he'd got from Muji in New Street, Birmingham. My heart leaped. It was narrower than Smiths (more portable), and less obvious on the outside (exercise books do have a scholastic look - at least mine didn't have 'times tables' on the back). It had a handsome, plain brown working appearance and about 70 pages. It cost 73p. It was love at first sight. All I had to do was get to Birmingham to buy some. Only thirty miles. A small distance for such a prize.

Now I have two Muji notebooks - empty so far. The perfect notebook. At last. Their pages will almost write themselves. Not sure about those lines, mind you. Do they do them unlined? And where do I keep my biro?

(photo by Dave Finchett)

any thoughts on the perfect notebook?