Reading ‘A Girl’s Story’ I find reference to a diary for 1963. I look through my Dad’s pocket diaries from the 1960s to see if there is one for that year that I can photograph. There isn’t but at the bottom of the box the diaries live in there are a couple of notebooks of my Dad’s and I idly flick through one. Two blotters are inbetween the pages, very well used. Blotters as palimpsests. I marvel at how much he used them. Would anyone, today, use one piece of paper so often for so long. Did he enjoy, I wonder, the multiple traces of letters written in blue and black inks superimposed one on top of another? Or was it just usual for consumable items to be kept and used for much longer in the 1950s and 60s?