Choosing a new diary for a new year is always a dilemma. Day-To-Day or Week-To-Week? Is there enough space to note birthdays, date nights and coffee mornings? Are there pages at the back for the contact details of new friends we'll make? And for all of our family and friends who live elsewhere, is there a map of the world with all of the different time zones? It takes me weeks to decide which diary to buy, the pressure of the commitment forcing me to stand pondering for hours somewhere between the Letts stand in Rymans and the stunning Alligator Panama Diary with garnet slide closure at Smythsons.

Fortunately for us, calendars are a much less volatile decision. Not only are they reassuringly affordable (remember Grandma giving Marks & Spencer's annual version of the Country Diary Of An Edwardian Lady calendar to every single granddaughter, niece, daughter-in-law and neighbour on her Christmas list, year after year after year after year...?), they are less of a commitment than a diary. You can have one calendar for every wall or desktop of every room in the house, without feeling guilty about it. However, more than one diary is tantamount to adultery within the moral code of social stationery etiquette. There can be no favouritism, no plurality. One has to commit to whoever will be the holder of doctor's appointments, conference calls, business lunches, parent-teacher conferences and opening night theatre previews.

This year I have two beautiful desktop calendars, one for home and one for the office. The worktop one was given to me by my beautiful friend George S. Blonsky, a photographer who created the calendar from images of his own work. The hometop calendar was designed by Jamison Hiner at Don't Press Me, who took computer illustrated graphics and then had them cut in magnesium. Each page is one month, and all of the months are hand set linotype.