They are nicely made, and the expensive ones with the gilded edges have butter-soft leather. They’re just the right size for pocket or purse. Unfortunately they are filled to the rafters with information I really don’t want to know about.
Please. I don’t care when Martin Luther King Day is. Or Rosh Hashanah, or the End of Ramadan, or that Parsee festival, Shivermeetimbers or whatever it’s called. And why the hell should I?
I know some people like to keep track of them. The people in the gift and frippery trades. The people who want to give you an excuse every day of the year to buy something from them. I won’t begrudge them their chosen professions, but I know their game, and they’re not getting any pro bono assistance from me.
So I’m not going to buy their stupid overpriced pocket diary that throws these stupid festivals in my face every time I open it. Trust me, I do NOT need to know when Kwanzaa is.
I’ll stick with my tried and true Oxfam diary. It costs half as much, has the London Underground map, which is a much prettier endpaper decoration if unintelligible without a jeweler’s loupe (hey, surely you’ve never actually USED that Manhattan Diary subway map); a few pages up front showing savages eating mush with their fingers; and in between no mention of Martin Luther King Day.
But lots of obscure British and Irish bank holidays and traditional festivals (Grouse Stuffing Porridge Day [Scotland]), along with 0800 MOT numbers and other inoffensive uselessness that nobody nobody NOBODY dares to suggest is somehow essential information that I need to be aware of.
