Black Book Back

Like most people that scribble things down, my notebook is one of the few things that I cannot stand losing, yet it happens to me far too often. Yet I usually get it back when it does. My current Moleskine has led as charmed an existence as the hero of a Jerry Bruckheimer production, having been lost three times in the past three months, and each time finding its way back to me, twice courtesy of strangers who work in cinemas and once courtesy of my sister, who found it on the floor of the Bernard Shaw on Dublin's South Richmond Street after a night's drinking just before Christmas. The latest person to return it to me was somebody who found it in the Gaumont Opéra cinema a few weeks back, lost after a screening of Paul Verhoeven's Black Book (ironic, given that the black book of the film's title looks very like a Moleskine). French people are particularly good for returning items of little monetary value but of real personal worth such as notebooks - much more so, I regret to say, than Irish people, who are, in my experience, more likely to toss it into the bin on finding it. I owe the person who returned it to me today a wee present by way of appreciation and I should also be a bit more careful when leaving the cinema in future.