Portland Festival!

I was both delighted and dismayed when a couple of weeks ago, I saw that The Crazy Suburban Mom had spied four Portland filofaxes for sale. Delighted because I LOVE my green personal Portland and have always kept an eye out for more Portlands  and dismayed because, with all that advertising, they were not going to go for the small sum that I got my green Portland for, a few years ago.
However, I needn’t have been too worried because it turned out that there aren’t that many other aficionadas in the world (or at least in the UK) and I snagged my red pocket Portland for a song and then I bagged a blue personal Portland for another song.
I’ve already reviewed the red Portland here. Let me now walk you through my blue one. In essence, it’s just like my green one but blue, but hey, it’s new to me and some of you might not want to go flicking back through old reviews.

The Portland is a very well made binder. It’s leather – both the exterior and the majority of the interior are a soft leather: only the linings of the pockets are in material. It also has two pen loops (all leather; no elastic; smallish pens only (though nowhere near as tight as the Baroque!). And of course, it lies flat as a bat! No training, no persuasion. Just unsnap the clasp and open. Ta-da!!

Flat as a bat

The interior layout:
On the inside left, there is a zipped, gusseted pocket which makes getting coins out of it a breeze, and because it is at the front, doesn’t rumple up all the pages (which, if it was at the back, it would). The back cover has six credit-card slots with a full-height pocket behind.  The zipped pocket is lined with fabric, as are the pockets at the back. Rings in both of my personal Portlands are 23mm (all perfectly aligned), but there was a Portland Grand with 30mm rings produced (which now seem rarer than hens’ teeth!).

Inside left

Gusseted pocket

Inside right

Now, if you read my review of the red pocket Portland, you may remember that I said the flap of leather covering the zipper was different in the red pocket than in the black pocket Portland (which hubby now has). The same is true between the green Portland and blue Portland in personal size. The green version has the cover as an extension of the pocket, whereas the blue (like the red pocket) has a flap that comes from above the zipper. I prefer the extension-of-the-pocket format, not least because the flap-from-above-version can get bent (as it has in the blue version). Does anyone know why and when they changed the format?

Extension-of-the-pocket zipper cover
(compare with the blue version above)

So, what will I use this filofax for? Hmm. I’m not sure. I bought it because it was blue and a Portland (which is at least one more reason than I bought the green version)! I think (think) I will use it for more detailed planning of my goals, which would allow me to remove those pages from my main carry-around binder. After all, I don’t really need to carry all that around with me – I just need to have looked at it at the weekly and monthly review sessions. I could also easily swap into using it as my carry-about planner if and when I want a break from the Baroque(s).