If it's not in the book it doesn’t happen

The 'book' in question is my big blue page-a-day office diary (the one on the end of this stack), filled with everything from staff holidays, accounts reminders, what articles are going out on social media, deadlines for publications, my daily to do lists and more personal events like birthdays and when the dogs are at their hydrotherapy.  Believe it or not there are already reminders in there for 2022! I have a series of notebooks for various projects and although I do much of the actual project planning and revision in digital form the ideas and rough drafts are always on paper, many digital versions start with see px in this notebook.  Notes in notebooks are always there and can be referred back to in later years sometime with a 'why did we not do this?' thought or more often more along the lines of what was I thinking? 

Every fieldworker knows that one of the first things to pack in your field kit is a good notebook, with a pencil so your notes don't run in the rain.  In a clear out earlier this year (before it became popular during these times of lockdown) I found one of my pocket books from when I was regularly completing fieldwork surveys, filled with notes of birds seen, cars counted, tally marks for NVC quadrats and details of photos taken interspersed with odd random thoughts that must have occurred as I was out and about.  All of which brought back many memories of early morning bird counts, sitting on the edge of the gorge to have my jam buttie morning snack and the miles marched trying to prove a certain plant was no longer growing on my patch.  Also in my clear out I found the notes from when CJS moved from Niall's Sleights office up to our current Goathland base, details of where computers would go, how many electrical outlets we needed, where to locate the BT Highway box (a type of internet connection from before broadband - eek!). It's been carefully filed in the office archives.