Introducing Jeremy (the kingfisher blue personal metropol)

Some of you (more likely none of you) will be sad to hear that I've semi retired Percy the Personal Portland. Technically it belonged to my Dad, and is potentially older than me. I felt that if I were to damage it, it would be a hell of a lot worse than damaging something I'd paid for with my own money. For now at least, he's tucked up nicely in a box looking after all my extra pages and such.

On to the subject at hand! This is Jeremy:

He's so pretty, and 50% off in the Staples sale, which makes Filofax's reduction of £5 look a bit meagre in comparison.

Normally I wouldn't have gone for a Metropol; My mini is a tad on the puffy side and smells of tobacco (not my doing I assure you), but the colour of the Kingfisher is amazing! Combined with the contrasting stitching and the cute way the material is gathered at the corners makes me smile. Metropols are nothing if not cheerful.

A tight squeeze.

In comparison to the Portland the Metropol is severely lacking in storage space, the card slots are exceptionally tight but you'd be hard pushed to lose anything from their clutches. I've used mine for stickers, business cards and library cards. As you can see I'm using a year on one page at the front, though I've taken to popping a to do list behind the fly leaf when I've got a lot to remember to do. While it did come with official filofax A-Z dividers, I really like how the colourful Paperchase dividers look.

I think everyone's tabs should be in a secret code.

While the A-Z is pretty, I have enough OCD in me to want dividers that run smoothly so I've kept the numbered ones it came with. I don't know whether I'm going to formally label them yet, but I know where everything is and that's all that matters...right?

Double trouble.

I'm not sure I've addressed the subject of my dual rulers before; I use one for my monthly view planner and one for the current week and I simply flip one over so the tab is at the bottom, preventing them from clashing with each other. I may swap one of them for a transparent one as I can see the benefits of being able to read through your ruler, but I'm undecided/yet to try it out.

To make up for the snug storage space I have two plastic sleeves for important things like giant holiday receipts, exhibition tickets (I can't recommend the Tate St. Ives. It's rubbish.), old Italian coins with naked men on them, and proof of postage for filofaxes I returned in early December and have yet to see a replacement or refund for...

At the back is a nice big mesh pocket for anything you fancy or the included, pre-punched, notebook. I quite like that I have some where solid to write so I plan on keeping the notebook. You can never have too many notebooks if you ask me.

Not as fat as it looks.

Pen-wise I've got with a Zebra 0.5 mechanical pencil and a blue Bic four colour thingy. As the front and back pen loops are two different sizes (front is significantly larger than the back) it should accommodate most combinations of writing paraphernalia. The front holds a Lamy Safari quite nicely, for those of you who like to use fountain pens regularly.

The only thing wrong with Jeremy is a small abrasion on the strap but, as it was the last of its kind in the shop and super cheap, it doesn't really bother me.

Teeny tiny.

And as a final bonus, it goes nicely with my current phone case!

 

Hopefully I'll be able to stick with this beauty for a while. It's far too pretty to ever get bored of :)