Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Stationery Freaks with myself, Rob Lambert, and of course
Helen:And with me, Helen Lesowski.
Rob:Now it's been a bit of a gap, hasn't it? But, you know, I think I think we're back, Helen.
Helen:We are?
Rob:Well, yes. So I think the last episode we put out was March this year, 2026, and we are recording this today on the 07/03/2026. But life's kind of happened as an Ellen, life sort of got in the way at its roller coaster moments.
Helen:Yes, so for myself, family stuff that has been completely absorbing. So I am terribly sorry. And but but Rob, we did have a very nice nudge via email and to say nudges on Instagram from people. So thank you to Stacy from Florida, who sent us a very lovely email going petition of one, get back to it, which is fair enough.
Rob:I like that. Petition of one, I think that's great.
Helen:And you said that we've seen some people on Instagram, which is really nice. So, lots of regulars coming on and going, hello. Yeah,
Rob:absolutely. So we we put a post up on Instagram just to say, look, we're we're still here, but we're not recording at the moment. And yeah, we had pages of Caroline. We had Kimberly. Hi, Kimberly.
Rob:We had pages of Caroline again. We had my journey to calmness and then a lady called Karen all saying the same thing, which is we miss you. Hope everything's okay. And they miss listening to the cast. So thank you.
Rob:Absolutely. Genuinely thank you because, you know, like Helen, but a few life moments that have been a bit tough and a bit rough over the last few months. Hopefully we're on the roller coaster that goes upwards rather than downwards. It just, I don't know. It's nice.
Rob:Isn't it Helen to have people in the community, people that listen to the cast wishing us the best and saying how much they miss the episodes that we do.
Helen:It does. Is nice. I also think, Rob, that we should just nod in the direction of the fact that it's been hugely efficient, that we've both had crises at more or less the same time because that's been, we've been able to pull then what could have been six months.
Rob:Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, we should we should. Yeah, we should thank karma for for playing its part in throwing us a downwards roller coaster moment. Yes. And at the same time.
Helen:At similar times, yeah, that was very convenient. Although I'd have skipped it willingly, but there we go.
Rob:Oh yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Helen:So Rob, let's just catch up. What have you been up to? Because I haven't even really spoken to you other than a few very hurried WhatsApp messages or texts going, ah, hope you're okay, speak to you later.
Rob:Loads of stuff. Mean, it's like we say, obviously you're trying to balance life. You're trying to balance work. You're trying to balance all those things, but you know me, I like a good project.
Helen:You do.
Rob:And I realized that a lot of my business side of life is, is almost kind of like a unique perspective. I started to wonder like, well, what's underneath that? And I realized it's probably the twenty, twenty five years of learning, reading, of seeing, observing. And I realized that I've actually got all almost all of that cataloged on little index cards. Typewritten, of course, because it wouldn't be me without a typewriter.
Rob:And so I thought, well, why don't I surface some of this stuff and put it into what I'm calling a public commonplace? Now I'm not the first one to do that. There's many public commonplaces out there and they're wonderful. And we've actually done an episode, haven't we, on common places as well?
Helen:Yeah, we did.
Rob:With Richard Barnard. That was a great episode. Actually one of our most listened to episodes. And so I thought, well, why don't I surface these things, take a picture of the index card, and post it publicly. So that's what I've been doing.
Rob:Now, not all of this stuff existed already. So some of it was in Apple Notes or was in a notebook somewhere. So I've been busy furiously typing on index cards. So much so that I think I've actually broken my typewriter. So index cards are a little bit thicker than I think the paper you're supposed to use in a typewriter.
Rob:Yeah. And yeah, it started to clunk and bang and make weird noises. But so far, it's still typing. So that's what I've been up to, public commonplacing.
Helen:I'm intrigued because I have not come across any public commonplacing and I like the sound of it. It sounds like scrolling for stationary fans, right?
Rob:It is. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's learning those. So, you know, whether they mean anything to anyone else is not the point of a common place is it? It's, it's what it meant to you.
Rob:But I think there's enough there that people will enjoy it. And so far actually, you know, was posting up on on Instagram on a dedicated Instagram channel. The feedback's pretty good. And, you know, people are liking it and it's going up on LinkedIn. Oh, dread.
Rob:Unfortunately, it is work related. So, you know, unfortunately, LinkedIn, I must use that site every so often.
Helen:You know, I love it. I love it. I'm sorry, people, if you are a LinkedIn fan, or if you're from LinkedIn, then that's fine, but I it's like Facebook but worse and I don't do Facebook.
Rob:No, I I don't know what it I think it's the humble brags. It's these ridiculous stories about learning business lessons from a taxi driver and all this kind of stuff and it's just I don't know. It it it doesn't take me long to feel utterly miserable on LinkedIn. Facebook is maybe ten minutes. Instagram, don't seem to have that problem too much with Instagram.
Rob:But LinkedIn, it's like literally the first ten seconds. And I'm like, I don't wanna be here.
Helen:Yeah, I have that. It's almost a trigger when I see the icon and I have to open that page. And that's really unfortunate. And I wonder how many people there are out there who feel like that. I mean, think, Tan, if this is a common problem, maybe you need to address it.
Rob:Well, I think it's just the nature of the audiences and it's all about business. So there's a lot of business selling, you know, maybe over inflating a few things. And I know there's a big audience out there because I started to notice that every time I went on there, felt utterly miserable, like, you know, awful, Not just mildly annoyed and depressed by it, but really genuinely felt rubbish. And so I did a quick Google search and there are Reddit forums full of people that feel the same way that just get this get this sort of physical and emotional reaction just just logging in. And I'm like, that's not good, is it?
Rob:But but anyway, the the public commonplace, it is work related. So obviously, I have to be on LinkedIn, but I I do sort of schedule those in the tool and just post and don't go on there very much. So that's what I've been up to. What about yourself then Helen?
Helen:Just you mentioning index cards reminded me that my mother, bless her, at 80 years old, rang me up and said, you haven't got a set of, like a box with index cards in, have you? Yep, absolutely have. Know where it is, let me get it for you, I don't want it anymore, don't use it. And I was able to basically be a stand in stationery shop for my mom. I've been accused of that and I completely forgotten that I'd got index cards.
Rob:That's awesome. So actually one thing just before next thing, I figured that once I'd taken a picture of all these index cards, do I put them back into the box similar to the one that you've just given your money? Yeah. And I thought, no, you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna blue tech them or white tech them onto my studio wall and then build a big sort of giant collage of commonplace index cards.
Helen:Oh, okay.
Rob:And some of them are different colors. So orange, green, yellows. And the wall is looking really impressive actually. And I'm not doing it artistic reasons because you know me, I can't draw. I'm not particularly arty.
Rob:I'm doing it because I wonder whether there's any patterns. I'm thinking is this some thread or or even actually when you start to see them all in one space, do you see connections that you might not have seen before? So that's another experiment. I'm enjoying it.
Helen:Well, yeah, I mean, patterns other than the fact they're all typewritten on index cards, I guess. But yeah, I think the content, that's really interesting. I want something we used to do occasionally was get people in meetings to put a whole load of thoughts on a wall, then you'd pull them together in themes because you could see themes emerging. Yeah. Lots of people were thinking along similar lines.
Helen:Yeah. Very interesting. Well, so having given away some index cards to my mom, I also gave away some is way back in March, I was on a writing retreat. And I thought I'd gotten a stack of all sorts of notepads that I didn't need anymore. I had had them for doing workshops.
Helen:Helen Callahan and I had, we're doing, do you remember Helen Callahan that author?
Rob:Oh yes, yeah.
Helen:Yeah, so if anybody's not heard that, heard Carseback and listened to it. We've been doing workshops about creativity and how the constraints that are put around you can make you more creative. And I had loads and loads of these like leftover notebooks. And I didn't really want them because, well, there's also a podcast about how many notebooks we have actually, isn't there? I don't need that many notebooks.
Helen:So I basically went through my entire collection and thought anything that I don't desperately need, or absolutely love can go to a better home. So I took it down to this writing retreat and there's only about a dozen authors and it was lovely. They were like locusts, scooching in and scooting. Are you sure we can have them? Absolutely, knock yourselves out.
Helen:So it was really joyful to go and share some stationery that would have just sat on a shelf for years until I found another use for it. And I could clear some space and I could bring joy with stationery, which I'm really
Rob:That's nice. What a lovely gift. Although there's part of me saying, I think you're cheating here, Helen.
Helen:Oh yeah. I'm
Rob:fairly certain that we said that our giant number of notebooks, and I'll include a link to that episode in the show notes, we were gonna try and use them without buying any new ones by the end of this year, and then we do a count to see how many we'd used from our giant list. And now you've actually gone and given some of those away that feels like you're cheating there, Helen. Cheating. In nice way, of course.
Helen:Aiming for the objective, Rob. The objective was I to have have actually bought two more, at least, two that I can see in front of me. So I'm fairly sure that could come out at least equal at the end of the year. But maybe just maybe I'll come out light because I gave some away.
Rob:Maybe, although the day before the deadline, I expect a parcel from me. Where I I'd very generously give you a significant number of my yellow legal pads because I know you'll like those.
Helen:Oh, yeah. Excellent. So sabotage.
Rob:Well, it wouldn't be stationary freaks if we weren't sabotaging each other's stationary success. Oh, that's good. That's funny. You know what? I was at a family meeting.
Rob:You know, meeting sounded pretty formal then, doesn't it? It's on my mind. I'm just looking at the commonplace. It's all work. I was at a family gathering, and one of my wife's distant relatives was over and there was a wonderful, wonderful gathering, loads of really nice people there.
Rob:And I'm a very sociable person. So I was just chatting to this gentleman. And, after a while we got chatting about what we do, which is what you normally do at these sorts of things. It turns out that he is actually the owner of Winchester's only stationery shop, Warren and Son. And I was like, wow, what a coincidence.
Rob:A family member who's a friend and, and you know, whatever the connection is turns out to run the Stationery Store in Winchester, so small world.
Helen:Well, is pretty amazing. Mean, I don't know. I'm delighted that you found another Stationery Freak, Rob.
Rob:Yeah. We even talked about if you're ever in Winchester, we actually talked, didn't we, about going and trying to get in touch with the person that owns that Stationery shop to see if we could do a podcast. And, and then I thought I was sat there thinking instead of just recording a podcast, and I'm not gonna put this out there as something we are gonna do, it's just a thought here, Helen, what about a live podcast where we actually invite Stationery community members from Hampshire to come and watch us record an episode? And then I thought, if I say that to Helen, I can imagine the color draining from her face.
Helen:You mean going out in public and meeting people?
Rob:And actually sit and record an episode in front of people. So I quickly put that thought to the back of my mind and said, no, I'm not convinced that's gonna happen.
Helen:That is a really nice idea though. I mean, I think that's really nice. And it would be great if we perhaps didn't do it live so much as record it in the same way when we went up to London for Amy's celebration ten years. We it would be really nice if we did something similar. So we had an event and we interviewed people there that we then curated and put together into because we had some really lovely chats with people, Absolutely amazing people, really interesting stuff.
Helen:I just People are interesting, aren't they?
Rob:They are. And the episode that Helen's referring to, and it was Amy from Markham Fold's tenth anniversary, that's episode number 68. I do have them in front of me, by way, Helen. Not just amazing at remembering every episode number.
Helen:I just assume everybody knows all our back catalog. So
Rob:if you haven't listened to that, that that was it's an interesting idea, actually. A sort of mini event. Obviously I'd have to speak to the, to the gentleman I was chatting to, but then yeah, interviewing people, because I think what we found was the love of stationary isn't, isn't really the love of the pens and the papers so much it is, but the people who appreciate pen and paper are often doing what I found anyway from who I spoke to. They're doing things that are tactile. They're bookbinders.
Rob:They're photographers building photography books. There's people doing design books. They're almost creating fairly tactile objects. And therefore that resonance, think with Stationery is it just came through, didn't it?
Helen:Yeah, really did. And, and, you know, there's things like, I've forgotten the lady's name who we spoke to who did the binding for all of the Marker four books. So interesting, so interesting, and all of the technicality, she kept saying, oh, I'm sorry, I'm probably boring you. I'm like, no, I love this, it was so good. Absolutely.
Helen:I don't know any of this, this is really interesting. So I find, yeah, it's a joy. It's a joy to talk to people. I mean, particularly people in stationery, but it's a joy to talk to anybody really about what they do. I really enjoy hearing, you know, experts talk about what they have expertise in.
Helen:I
Rob:love it. Yeah, that was that was Vicky, wasn't it?
Helen:Was it Vicky?
Rob:Yeah. Then we were speaking to a lady called Terry who had the tiniest handwriting, remember?
Helen:Tiny and neat.
Rob:Mean, dear
Helen:Lord, it was like, beautiful.
Rob:I know, amazing. I'm just looking at some of my handwritten notes around me and thinking, yeah, I on need to a calligraphy course or even just basic handwriting course.
Helen:That's not, yeah. It's not you, is it really?
Rob:No, no, it's not, it's not. I'll tell you another project I've been running is sort of type, I went down this rabbit hole a couple of weeks back and actually last night, waiting for my son to come home from his prom, which was good fun.
Helen:Oh, adorable.
Rob:Ridiculous time in the morning because he'd forgotten his key. I was
Helen:Oh, and he's right on brand.
Rob:Yeah, I know. And I I was down a rabbit hole of old publishing companies. So, know, you think about old newspapers back in sort of thirties, forties, fifties, you know, bookbinding companies, that kind of stuff. I went down this massive rabbit hole. And I I sort of came to a conclusion and I thought about this a couple of weeks back, couldn't quite name it, was when you look at the pictures of how they used to operate, everything was neat.
Rob:Everything was tidy. Everything seemed to have a place. There were stacks of paper on one side of the desk, some on the other. And I kinda realized that they'd constructed the office around attention, I think, not productivity. And I think what they've done, if you think about it, they didn't have any digital systems.
Rob:They had no way of sort of, you know, automating some of the stuff that we do now. Everything had a place, and there was almost like a process. It was almost like the office became the operating environment for the business. Things went in a certain place, and if they didn't, then obviously you lost time and energy because you couldn't quickly find stuff. And so I've been trying to do something similar in my studio, and I bought this fairly cheap A four.
Rob:You'll be proud of me, I'm back into ring binder things here. One of these kind of ring binder, a bit like a giant file effects, let's call it what it is. And it's got these inserts, and I type out my daily list of what I'm gonna do on these wonderful A four sheets, and I type feed them into the typewriter. They're already pre formatted with various things. And I type them out, and then I get about my day, and then I turn the sheet over, and then I do a reflection, like a journal.
Rob:I'm a bit less of an emotional thing, more of a factual kind of thing. And it has been an absolute game changer.
Helen:Really?
Rob:Yeah. I mean, it's maybe thirty minutes, 15 in a minute in the morning, 15 at night. And it's just about attention. It's about focus. There's no distractions.
Rob:I'm just sat there at the keyboard and it's been wonderful. Absolutely for my own mental health, for my own sort of clarity, but getting that little glimpse of attention back, it's been wonderful.
Helen:That sounds really interesting. I bought, what's one of the, you know, I said I bought a couple of books. One of the books I bought, we said that I'd had a bit of time because it hasn't been great for me. And I had been really good and not bought lots of stuff between sort of January and March, April time. And then I decided that I needed something to cheer me up rock.
Helen:So I spent £100 on Instagram It's a company called Bungu who are, that's a horrible name really, but they're Japanese and they package it all up really beautifully in those little scarves that they do. And you get the kind of stationery that has won awards and stationery awards and such like. And one of the books that I bought there was one for reflections, and it was a tea and diary time, so it's like a morning diary. And the idea was is that you do a reflection on yesterday, and then you do your plans for today. And I really bought it because I love the color of the cover rather than morning and afternoon.
Helen:And I think I would have done better if it'd been the other way, if I'd done the afternoon reflection and then the morning to Yeah. Planning to do the next. But I haven't used it yet. But that idea of reflection, and it's tiny, it's only A6 size, so it's little, which is very small for me. But yeah, if you really have some good feelings with it, maybe I should break it out and actually use it, do it.
Rob:Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I just think it's that. I think the office piece, environment or the conditions as I call them, is really important because I saw Austin Kleon, you know who he is, I'm sure everybody knows who he is. A few years back, posted about his studio that he's got and how he's got dedicated space for each different type of work.
Rob:And I think a lot of people see that and go, well, that's about productivity. But I don't think it is. I think it's about attention. I think it's about giving a space of meaning so that when you're there, your attention is quickly brought to whatever it is that you're doing. And I think that reflection piece, and certainly for me having that by the typewriter with no computers and stuff, is almost like a double ritual.
Rob:There's a I'm here to do this activity. And this activity is just being game changing, just literally fifteen minutes. And the slow typing, or if you're going be writing, is awesome. What we were doing before, I was using Todoist and recurring tasks that required no attention to create them and really no attention to pay attention to them. And I think that's why I've been really struggling with digital tools recently.
Rob:Because they're just too easy. There's this there's not enough friction.
Helen:I I am also, you everybody will know, you and I are big Todoist fans.
Rob:Mhmm.
Helen:But I am not using it very much at the moment. It's closed for a lot of my week or month at the moment. And I find that really interesting. It's only you mentioning it now that I think I can't remember the last time I opened it.
Rob:And I wonder whether obviously, you know, life events have this ability to get you to, I guess, focus get clarity on actually what's important.
Helen:What matters.
Rob:And I think tools like to do is great. I'm sure people genuinely lots of success and I've used it for years, but I think I reach for those tools when it all becomes just too much. When there's just too much work, there's too much going on and my attention's all over, my focus is everywhere. And tools like Todoist are great for that because you can just drop everything in there. You can set recurring tasks, you can order them in projects and all that kind of stuff.
Rob:But I think in doing so, it doesn't remove the fact that there's too much going on. It just lets you put it into a digital tool, which is endless and limitless in its capability. Whereas the reflection piece is actually you taking a step back and going, hang on, what is important to me? Versus stick it all in Todoist and let that do it for you. And I think that's the realization I came to is I'm just doing too much.
Rob:And Todoist is good at managing when there's too much to do, but it's not going to stop me from having too much to do. It's just going to do well at organizing it. And I think to me, that's been the breakthrough.
Helen:Yeah, I think you're right, actually. I think it's a it's a very interesting phenomenon and we hit against it over and over. We talk about this and we go in cycles. Todoist is great. We're moving everything onto digital and then it's great repeating tasks and those kinds of things, which are life saving, I cannot possibly suggest they're not.
Helen:But then I find myself always going back to notepad and pen. And in fact, we were talking literally just before we came on, completely not really related, although it's always about stationery, about this online move, there's a digital move towards analog. Everybody is feeling that that slower, more tactile was a word you used earlier, that slower, more tactile way of thinking with your hands as well as your mind, it seems to be gaining some traction, more traction.
Rob:Yeah, I think so. And you know, I'm a big fan of following Gary V, Gary Vaynerchuk, if you don't know who that is, he's swearing, I'll give you that I'm not gonna suggest you go and check out who he is, if you don't like being offended by lots of bad language. And he's very much a, you know, post a 100 times a day. I mean, he's got a big team behind him. But even before that, you know, all about all about volume and quality, but volume, if you can scale it.
Rob:And, and so there's a bit of me that obviously disagrees with that because I can't do that. Just can't even get close to even putting, we can't even put one post out a month on Instagram, can we?
Helen:Sometimes we can do two or three, but this is just really sad.
Rob:He's always been at the forefront of looking and seeing trends and he's actually pretty accurate with them. And the one thing that he keeps calling out along with many, many other people is the rise of analog. Yeah. And the fact that people are just sick and tired of AI slop, they're sick and tired of the constant grind and the stuff we've just talked about, the massive overwhelm that many people face. Yeah.
Rob:And actually people are going back to stationary, they're going back to analog methods, more vinyl sales, you know, it's always it's been that go going that way for the last five or ten years. But I think this year, we are starting to see, you know, you get yourself on YouTube. The number of people that have got YouTube videos about notebooks saving their mental health and stopping them from being overwhelmed is huge.
Helen:I love, I absolutely love how a notepad and pen will allow me to order my thoughts. Yeah. Just, I mean, just writing a list, you know how much I love my lists, writing a list is great for me because it's not that the list itself is important, although I do use it and it's vitally important to me, actually the act of just capturing stuff in my head so that my head can then, you know, it's like empty so then it can do thinking. It's not full up with the things that I mustn't forget. The things that I mustn't forget are on the paper largely.
Helen:And then my brain is free to do the thinking around how best to put them together or how best to move on to the next thing or deliver one of those things. I love that writing stuff down element. Yeah. Just couldn't do without it. Couldn't do that.
Rob:100%. And I think people that have spent a lot of time on digital tools, I'm sure people are really successful in many areas on that, are starting to come to the same conclusion. I think in a workplace, what I've started to see is way more people with notebooks. You it used be everyone was taking notes on iPads and computers and annoying the heck out of everyone else around them bashing away on the keyboards. And I'm starting to see a lot of people now with really nice notebooks.
Rob:And, you know, my kids, they got given some some nice notebooks from various different places, and they love them. They're like, wow, this is great.
Helen:My daughter is absolutely not going to have a notepad anywhere with her.
Rob:Yeah, mean, I must admit when I'm out and about, I still pretty much capture everything into Apple Notes. But at some point that does find its way either onto a index card or into a notebook somewhere.
Helen:I have a nice, it's not quite a traveler's journal, but it's the closest I could get. It's not quite a commonplace book because it's not always in use. But whenever I am for any reason leaving the house other than just go to the shops kind of thing, If I'm leaving the house to go for work thing or for a social thing even, I always have a little A6 size notebook. It's a cover into which I then have two notebooks, one's thin and one's quite thick, and I'll just capture stuff in there. So, you know, we were on holiday and I'm the one with the pen and paper so we can work out where our photo is going be, where we're to go, where it is postcode wise, so is it near to another thing?
Helen:All of those things are the things that I have because I am the one with the pen and paper.
Rob:Yeah, that's it. I must admit when I did go abroad or go traveling, do take paper. And actually my sister-in-law bought me a really nice birthday gift back in March actually, which was actually before we did the last cast, but I didn't mention it on the last one, I don't think anyway, was this little notepad, very similar to the one that you're just describing. And it's, I didn't realize at the time, but it's a Midori notepad.
Helen:Oh, yeah. Nice.
Rob:And it's really, really dinky. It's like a little reporter style one where the, you you've got the binding at the top and it's called a Midori I think it's called grain, but I don't know whether that's describing the paper. There's no sort of, there's no sort of big branding
Helen:The paper on is beautiful, isn't it?
Rob:Yeah. Well, she said that when she gave it to me and said the paper's lovely and I've never had a Midori before. Know you're a big fan and we've done episodes on this before And the paper is good, isn't it? What do they do to it? Is it laced with something?
Rob:This is, it makes you actually want to touch the paper. It's weird, isn't it?
Helen:And it's just beautiful to write on. So it feels like it's drawing your focus. I mean, I find it really curious how it can be that the paper you write on affects you so much, but it really Yeah. Does,
Rob:Do you remember the, we did an episode, I think we mentioned it, I was working with somebody who was a big pen fan. You know, he had loads of really nice ink pens and gel pens and various different things, but he had no care at all about the paper that he wrote on. It didn't matter to him. You know, cheap stationary cupboard notepad was fine for him. And I was like, I don't get it.
Rob:You're a pen freak, but you don't care about the paper? I don't know.
Helen:It's like, yeah, I mean it really is weird, isn't it? Because you think that everything that you wrote is affected by the paper that you write.
Rob:Absolutely, yeah.
Helen:But to me it's only, you know, a lovely pen and lovely ink is only half of the story, right? The paper you write on needs to not bleed, it needs to not bleed through or across because some of them don't they, they like kind of spider And web it kind of trickles out, it's horrible.
Rob:I think as well the pen and the paper changes the nature of your thinking, that's what genuinely believe that. Hence up with different sized papers for different types of activity. But that Midori stuff is weird, isn't it? It's, it's, you just want to keep touching it and using it. And it's addictive in a way that is, you know, obviously strange, but good for them.
Helen:Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, my Hobonichi is very similar, actually, they have this thing called a Tomoe River Tomoe paper or something.
Rob:Oh, yeah.
Helen:But it's a special kind of paper. And it really is, again, quite tactile. And it's a joy to write on always. So even when you're like halfway through the book, you know how some books once you're halfway through the book, the paper becomes less joyful to write on. It's like a good bit and further you get in.
Helen:Yeah, it doesn't have that effect. So yeah.
Rob:Maybe that's why I've abandoned so many notebooks, Helen. Thinking you might be onto something.
Helen:I'll just give you another excuse, Rob, let's be honest.
Rob:Because remember when we were doing our notebook episode where we were counting how many notebooks we got. And I thought maybe people would want to buy a half use notebook. So it's, you know, got some thinking in the front, but then the back half is entirely free. And my,
Helen:I'm never gonna fly.
Rob:Although my kids can obviously finish school. This was last year actually when they finished school, they bring, they bring home all of their exercise books and all that kind of stuff. And they were going through them going, don't want them, don't want them burn them, get rid of them, all this kind of stuff. But almost all of them are only half used. So I've added those to my notebook collection.
Helen:Oh, wow.
Rob:Because there's half a notebook there. I'm not gonna see that go to waste.
Helen:No, except for the fact that you don't like it once you've used a notebook. So when are you gonna pick that up and think, you know what I need? Half a notebook.
Rob:I'm not Helen, that's gonna be in the package that arrives today before the end of our challenge.
Helen:You are an evil man.
Rob:And you will have my child's maths and English and art and all the other stuff in the first half.
Helen:I'll have room, I'll have a very big bonfire at the top of the garden.
Rob:That would be a shame. Would be you could take it to your writing class, they could use it, there might be some inspiration for some characters or you know, storyline in the front half.
Helen:In year eight maths, I suspect You
Rob:haven't seen my 12 year old's math books. I'm not too sure he's paying attention to maths, let's put it that way.
Helen:I used to go to school with somebody who drew little comic sketches all the way along and they were really quite a good artist. So every now and again you'd have on a page and you would have like this comic strip of like three or four frames of like, cool.
Rob:That's cool.
Helen:I know, know been really talented.
Rob:Well Helen, it's been, what was that March, April, May, June, July, it's been about three or four months and it's just like old times again, Helen, it's been good.
Helen:Yes, strangely not a lot has changed. I bought Stationery, used Stationery, met people who liked Stationery, very much the same, it's lovely.
Rob:It is, it is. And I'm still using the typewriter, which I think when we did the first episode, it must be about two years ago, three years ago maybe.
Helen:I may have mocked you.
Rob:You did. I Yeah, you probably
Helen:lied though, Rob, to be fair.
Rob:Whereas I think I've used it so much that I think I've broken it now. So anyway, we'll get that fixed. So Helen, is there anything else you'd like to cover in this episode?
Helen:No, I think we've more than talked everybody back around to the fact that we're that sort of people.
Rob:Yeah. And once again, you so much. The messages were genuinely heartwarming, genuinely, you know, authentic. I think the important part is that they just felt like people genuinely cared. I think that's the bit that warms my little heart.
Rob:Thank you. Thank you to everybody.
Helen:Yeah, thank you. It was nice.
Rob:Okay. And if you are familiar with the format, there will be a newsletter and that will be the first one since March as well. So there'll be a newsletter that accompanies this podcast. And of course, if you do want to see that one post a month that we put onto Instagram, then you will find us at Stationery Freaks UK over on Instagram, the podcast and the newsletter. You can find both of those at stationeryfreaks.com.
Rob:Yeah. With that, Helen, I think we are done.
Helen:I think we should be.
Rob:I think so. I think so. Well, thanks again, everybody. And we look forward to speaking to you in the next episode of Stationery Freaks. Take care.
Rob:Bye bye.
Helen:Bye.