Radical thoughts
We’re counting down the days to an adventure. Those of you who’ve been reading a while will know that means I’m giving some consideration to the format of my journal.
I had it in mind to create something a little like this one which I bought in Japan and used to record the fun of a cruise in 2011.
The pages have a folded pocket and not only did I find it fun to use, it was a good means of recording our travels without too much fuss.
I made myself a similar, if slightly larger journal for the following year’s cruise.
Once again, the pages have a folded pocket in which I could stuff all kinds of things.
As I hummed and hawwed about what format/size to create, I really enjoyed looking through those journals and remembering the fun days we spent with our friend Sandie before boarding the ship in Sydney that year.
I was thinking, too, that every day whilst on board the ship, we receive a daily programme, “Passages”, which I usually stuff into my journal, cut out the relevant bits and then throw away the rest. I was mulling over the idea of using those almost-A3 size papers to create the pages for my journal this time and putting them to good use. Does it matter that I don’t know the exact size now? Might I put together a kind of framework that I could then adapt once we are on board?
I was prevaricating. Thinking out loud. Muttering.
Then my Hero uttered a radical thought.
“Why do you need to do a journal at all this time?”
He had a point. I’ll still put together some Project Life pages when I arrive back home, I’ll still write my blog and I can’t help but scribble in my notebook. What if I used a slightly larger format notebook and made it into more of a journal?
Well, in the words of my m-i-l Bettine, “we’ll see, dear”.
I do know that contrary to expectations, cruises offer less time than a road trip to sit and create pages in a journal. They’re low on ephemera too, because travelling in a group means no entry tickets and suchlike. So, yes, maybe I could simply extend my notebook. I wouldn’t need to take all that art kit with me and instead, could simply take the minimum bits and pieces. A glue stick maybe, to fix things in….or maybe a small stapler…and a few crayons…pair of scissors…one of those waterbrushes…oh, and perhaps a small sheet of rubber stamps?
In less than two weeks time we will have boarded the ship here*. (Can you guess where it is?) We’ll already have set sail to retrace a route we last sailed in 2004, hopefully exploring a few different ports of call this time and adding two new countries to our list, weather permitting.
And every evening when we return from dinner, there will be a copy of Passages on our bed. Will I be able to resist making it into a journal, now I’ve had the thought? What do you think?
* We board the ship in Callao, which is the port of Lima, Peru, where we left it two years ago to go to Machu Picchu. The photo is of the beach in the Miraflores district where we’ll stay overnight before boarding. Did you ever imagine Lima to be a beachy place?
