Note to self: bring one along

GO GADGETS YOU CAN'T beat a notebook for a reliable holiday companion. Without one you'll never remember whether Manhattan's best pizzeria was on East 12th Street or 12 West Street (It's Una Pizza Napolitana, 349 East 12th, by the way).

A descriptive line jotted down on the spot can have more power than a glossy photograph or postcard - just ask the locals in Positano, on Italy's Amalfi coast, who have been inundated with tourists for half a century partly on the back of John Steinbeck's 1953 quote about the cliff-edge town. "Positano bites deep," he wrote. "It is a dream place that isn't quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you've gone."

Moleskine (www.moleskine.co.uk; www.mojolondon.co.uk; also available at Eason, Waterstones and some stationery retailers) makes stylish little hard-backed notebooks (above), starting from about €13, that are able to resist the wear and tear of the road.

Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin were fans back when these notebooks were available only from a Paris distributor, and both went to extraordinary lengths to secure a supply.

Now Moleskines are a lot easier to get hold of, with ruled versions, blank sketchbooks, soft-cover versions and a range of diaries available. They're addictive when you get your mitts on them.

US company Nomad, www.nomadjournals.com, makes outdoor logbooks (€17) encased in a weatherproof case.

The format of these is a bit rigid - 120 pages, with room for 29 daily entries - so it may be a little awkward to use the book to write the opening chapter of your novel.

Chatwin filled his notebooks with the raw observations that fuelled his books, which was why they were so important to him. "Losing my passport was the least of my worries; losing a notebook was a catastrophe," he wrote.

aharvey@ irish-times.ie

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times