If you own a Smythson’s Panama diary you don’t count the pennies. Their entry-level model is priced at £35 and if you want a little flap at the back and a cedar pencil …
It’s worth £35 because the flimsy pale blue pages make it unobtrusive in the inside pocket of my coat. 2019 starts for Smythson today and ends on 26th January 2020. The London Underground map has been reinstated with the addition of a tram line from Wimbledon to New Aldington and Beckenham Junction; more useful than the lists of Clubs in London, New York and Hong Kong. If you are a member you know the address and telephone number, if not, you are not encouraged to rock up.
Smythson, est 1887, lives in a pre-internet age. It lists Days & Dates, Cultural & Sporting Events, Theatres & Concert Halls, Cinemas, Museums & Art Galleries, Principal Clubs, Travel Information, a World Map, London Sunrise & Sunset, British Moon Phases, University Terms (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Harvard, Princeton and Yale), Law Sittings (High Court and Court of Appeal, England and Wales), Conversions, a Vintage Wine Chart, Zodiacs (I’m a horse), Birth Stones and Flowers and British Field Sports Seasons. The only contact information is telephone numbers. If you are in Bond Street do pop in and tell them that there are websites these days. If you don’t own a Panama diary, topaz is the birthstone and chrysanthemum the flower for November.
Mrs Aitch buys these each year in Thunderbirds Pink. I’m tempted by the crocodile (faux?) version, but most of ’em (with the exception of your ox-blood, British Railways maroon, cherry? diary) are so, so girly.
Remember the Francis Chichester London diary?
I endure considerable ribbing from family and friends for continuing to use a non-digital diary, but it is quite nice to have a drawer full of back issues to remind one of what one did in previous years. As memory failings multiply, they become ever-more useful. However, I can’t imagine a diary in the soi-disant egalitarian U.S. listing only Harvard, Yale, and Princeton dates. Smythson is venerable indeed, but like so many good purveyors of useful things these days, they have been taken over by marketing people who lay on someone’s idea of elitism with a trowel.