Hellos and Goodbyes

This week brought an emotional goodbye, but also an enticing hello. 

It was farewell to an old friend I'd grown very attached to. We'd been through a great deal together, highs and lows, and had some amazing times... 

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I get through notebooks at the rate of one every six months or so, and the latest has joined the pile of memories in my study, right there at the top. 

It's not that I'm nostalgic (although I am), I do feel that the past deserves honouring. And there are practical reasons, too, for keeping the notebooks. 

Each is a guide to what I was working on at the time, going back ten years now, my thoughts and feelings, like a writer's diary. And each outlines the development of everything I've ever written. 

But they're also full of knowledge, all that I've learnt along the way, and that I very much want to keep close. 

Don't think me strange (or even stranger?), but every time I retire a notebook I hold a little ceremony, saying goodbye and drinking a toast to it. 

And then comes an exciting moment... breaking out a new notebook. 

We've already bonded, working together on some ideas for a radio comedy, which I'm enjoying enormously. 

And, as ever with the start of a relationship, we're full of smiles together and looking forward to a joyous writing future.