One of the fabled L. Cornelissen & Son sketchbooks. I used some packing tape to secure the cover from a Coach House Press book catalogue to the front and back. It seemed entirely appropriate. There is a story, popularized bv Moleskin, that when Bruce Chatwin found out that his beloved travel notebooks were soon to be unavailable, he bought a huge number of them. I should have done the same with the L. Cornelissen & Son books. Now they still have the signature green cover but they are made by a completely different company. The paper has changed and they are not quite what they were.

This one contains a trip through France, Spain, and Morocco with my teenage daughter, Esmé. She is the ideal travelling companion: stoic, interested, trusting, and up for anything. She was desperately ill in Morocco from some watered down orange juice. We recovered in Essaouira where the French influence meant that we could sustain ourselves with crepes.

In Spain Esme was fascinated by the orange trees. After a few days in Grenada she plucked up enough courage to pick one from the tree and was sorely disappointed to find that they were only ornamental. The fruit was bitter and inedible.