*I have risen from my sick bed – Lazarus-like – to pen these frivolous words. It has been a wee while since my last blog – poorlyness doesn’t help. But, as the advertising blurb says, you’re worth it. Anyway, here’s a bit of nonsense until I’m feeling better.*

**Actually, this blog post was written before I succumbed to unwellness and my sick bed. So, you’re not that special.**

***At lunchtime, I am hoping to feel well enough to head out off to York to watch The Red Roses (England Women’s Rugby Union team) kick-off their defence of their Women’s 6 Nations (W6N) title. Please pray for me!***

Hold onto your hats, folks. These next few paragraphs are likely to blow your chosen headwear clean off your heads.

Are you ready?

Here goes, then…let the hat losing chaos commence.

I have bought, among one or two other items (perhaps more of which later if you can handle even more excitement), a brand new notebook for my trip to Switzerland for Euro25.

Are your hats still safely on? I hope they are.

Exciting stuff, eh? Please, take a moment to calm down and get your breath – and hats – back before you continue reading on.

I realise that some of you may not deem this to be quite as impressive and wonderful as I do. You may think it quite dull and not worthy of mention. But you’d be wrong.

Such a purchase may not sound impressive when there are so many wonderful things available to acquire. But I would disagree. Opening a fresh notebook and making those initial entries onto its crisp, blank pages is always an enjoyable occasion. It could be described as a treat. At least, I believe it could.

My new notebook is a nice one. It is quite cosmopolitan being designed in Milan by Moleskine. (Posh, eh?). It’s from their range of ‘Smart” writing devices. Basically these notebooks have what can only be described as wizardry woven into each page. When written on using a special wand pen, your words miraculously materialise onto your electronic devices. Even more wondrously, your handwriting is then deciphered and turned into editable text for use in emails, documents and the like.

Like I said, it’s a kind of magic.

I have been using Moleskine’s Smart notebooks and diaries for several years and have been impressed with how they work. So when I decided to take a new notebook to record our Swiss adventures I immediately turned to the Italian firm to make my choice. Rather appropriately, for our trip following The Lionesses in Switzerland, this one has a red cover to which I will add a white cross. Thus making it immediately identifiable from my other Moleskine’s as my Swiss Euro25 journal.

I have yet to mark any of its pages with my untidy scrawl. My handwriting is something I have been working at improving for a few years. Progress is continuing. Tapping away on keyboards, laptops and devices is the death of penmanship but my daily diary updates help.

I do like to write on nice paper and with a good pen. It is satisfying knowing that my words appear in a quality notebook, even if the words themselves fall short of the quality I’d wish them to be.