My parents were young people with a small child in the sixties. Traditions were thrown out of their lives with the same enthusiasm as many of their generation. Christmas was perhaps their most ‘traditional’ time

One tradition was my dads desire to gift both business and personal diaries to family members on Boxing Day. In the United Kingdom that is the day after Christmas day. Whatever would people think in 2023 if I kept that tradition going.  Diary and calendar use has truly fallen off a cliff with most people keeping an electronic diary. The Filofax was the first death blow to traditional diaries and that was quickly passed over for electronic memory jogging.

For some years I managed with an electronic diary but once I returned to doing complex shifts and on-calls I really needed a paper record, the chance of running out of a phone battery at the point someone wanted to swap a complex set of shifts was more common than you might think. At that point I returned to the flexibility of a filofax and have stuck with it. No risk of battery failure but a big risk of being not to hand at the exact moment I need it.

There is a poignancy to diaries and my dad. He died unexpectedly and suddenly from bowel cancer in the middle of treatment. His treatment plan carefully plotted two months beyond his life. I still have that diary. I now know that it was his decision to stop treatment when the odds of it giving him a good quality of life were slipping away.

On a lighter note, as you see from the only photo my filofax is not a thing of tidyness or order.