There is nothing like the 1st of January appearing on the calendar to start a rush of New Year Resolutions. I suspect I have now lived long enough to realise that – if you are going to turn over a new leaf, or set out on a new and better trajectory through life – it would be better to start it on a cold Thursday afternoon in the middle of March. Nevertheless, I can’t seem to shake the habit of wanting to start a new diary on the 1st of January: it is a resolution that lasts, on average, about eight to ten days. When my descendants gather my papers together to examine my strange existence, they will be intrigued by the fact that I did so much during the first eight days of the year and then went into wordless hibernation for the remaining 357 days. This year I am limiting myself to the promise to keep my picture calendar going …. until the 8th of January at least.
Had I been tempted to start the more traditional type of diary I could have done worse than take up the offer made by the Halifax stationery and printing company, E Mortiner Ltd, in an advert in the Halifax Evening Courier exactly 100 years ago today. From their shop at the corner of Silver Street and Commercial Street you could buy, for just a half crown (twelve and a half pence to those of a shorter life-span), a Foolscap Diary – three days to a page – and they would throw in a free insurance policy for £1,000 for the coming year.
What with Covid, economic meltdown, social and political crisis and all the other problems we are likely to face in the year ahead, that is an offer I doubt that we will see repeated for 2021.
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