We kept our notes in plain notebooks bound in black.

It's a 7- by 9-inch looseleaf binder with forms to fill out - better than a plain notebook and cheaper than a Filofax.

During the war years, printed diaries were much harder to obtain, so, not to be thwarted, he resorted to a plain notebook for the purpose (below).

It was not a blog or e-mails sent from his waiting-to-invade base in the Kuwaiti desert, it was a plain notebook and pen with which he kept track of what was on his mind and what was in the cross hairs of his Abrams tank.