Birth of an Obsession...

As a child, I used to love the first day of the new school term.

I would forget the previous term’s miseries of being picked on, of being left out of the ‘In Crowd’, of being the one that nobody wanted on their team for sports. The saving grace for a sad little geek like me was the joy of that first day back, when the new exercise books were handed out.......

There was something almost holy about the freshness of the unsullied pages, the smooth, uncreased covers that were bare of doodles and dog-ears. It was a secretly beloved ritual: that slight hesitation before carefully inscribing my name in reverential hand on the virginal cover, knowing full well that in a few short weeks, that pristine pamphlet, that exquisite exercise book would be scribbled on, forever soiled by sweaty juvenile paws and bearing the legend “I LUV DAVID”, or the name of some other pimply youth that was my current crush.......

Some thirty-five years later, those feelings wash over me as if it were only yesterday that I penned my name in childish script. What significant event has sparked this re-run of the start of my geekdom? As echoes of days long gone fade into the past, I look down at the catalyst, hesitating slightly before once more filling in the front page of my brand, spanking new Moleskine with my name and address, savouring the very smell of the unspoilt pages, the feel of them as I let them flutter through my fingers. I’m instantly taken back to that first day at school where I clamoured to be that term’s Class Monitor, handing out the biros and pencils to my ungrateful peers who had no appreciation of such implements and immediately put teeth marks into the smooth painted surface of the HBs and plastic pen tops.....

Perhaps that’s where my obsession with stationery began? I always was kind of odd....... *Strokes journal reverently*