Dear Diary Maker, or letter from someone without Outlook

I still use a paper diary to organise my life. I'm so oldfashioned I find it far easier to write things down in a book than on a calendar attached to an email program. This is partly because our work computers use a fairly odd program that doesn't communicate with people using Outlook very well so I find myself agreeing to meetings at the wrong times (Consequently, I have conniptions when people try to check my availability by looking at my blank online calendar.)

The good side of this is that my diary isn't hooked up to my phone so that when a phone beeps at three in the morning to remind us that someone has to remember to be somewhere that day, it's my Beloved or one of his colleagues and NOT MY FAULT AT ALL.

The bad side is choosing a diary that works. Every October I'm asked to choose a diary from a fairly short list. I always get a smallish week to a page one that costs my boss about $2.50. Every January I wrestle with how I'm going to use it (is there room for appointments, contacts, reminders to pay bills?) and how the stuff the diary makers put it is ever so slightly inconvenient (No, I emphatically do not care how to convert hogsheads to litres. International paper sizes are pointless. Why is there no space for email addresses, in 2007!!??)

Last year my Beloved gave me a very expensive English diary that was absolutely perfect - for me anyway. It was featherlight so lots of lots of pages weighing not very much. Each page had space for daily appointments and a facing page for notes. Dozens and dozens of pages at the back for notetaking in meetings. It also told me the best vintages for wine around the world (2002 was the best for South Australia but not so good for NSW wine, apparently), British mileage, English University terms, London sunrise and sunsets and principal London clubs (Annabel's but not Bouji's!). I found this funny rather than irritating and it also had a good accurate selection of international public holidays.

Sadly, this spoiled me for going back to the $2.50 diary from the stationery cupboard. For a week, I've struggled and struggled. Finally, yesterday, I gave in and bought a refillable week to a view "diary system" in a zip up case with room for a pen, 300 business cards and probably a nail file, comb and lipstick. It has a big address book at the back, separate yearly, monthly and financial planners and a To Do list section. All good, until you get to the stupid "important details" page at the front which has space for you to put your name, address, phone number, passport number, medicare number, blood group. (What? No tax file number down here. The manufacturers clearly have more faith in my ability not to lose the diary and my identity than I do) and then "important phone numbers" of doctor, dentist, bank manager (WHO has a "Bank Manager" and who would put them THIRD on a list of most important people?), accountant and solicitor (actually ditto for those too).

There's no space on this page for me to put my Beloved, my hairdresser, the vet or helpful things like all the bloody passwords I can't remember if I don't use them every day. Just as well I have a phone to keep these in - and where did I leave that then?