For whoever is starting again

Starting again comes in more versions than the shops allow for. Somebody retires after thirty years, or hands in their notice, or moves three hundred miles for a job, or simply decides that this January is the one. The presents aisle answers all of that with a clock and a card. A blank notebook is about what has not happened yet, which suits the moment far better, and these fourteen covers lean the same way: a promise set larger than the number beside it, a chapter with whatever figure you choose on it, three words somebody has picked to go on with, or a name on a book that is still empty.

Why there is no cover with the word retirement on it

Because it would be a joke about golf, and because the person receiving it has just spent a month being handed things about the job they are leaving. So the layout does the work a label would do badly. The best is yet to come puts the promise in the largest type on the cover and keeps the figure small, which on a retirement present is the whole difference between a compliment and a reminder of somebody's age. The chapter covers take any number you type, so a leaving year, a length of service or the year ahead all fit the same layout. Property of and the monogram say nothing beyond whose book it is, and that is all most people want on the front of something they carry about.

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The present from the office, and the present from you

They are two different jobs and they want different covers. From a whole team, the strongest thing on this page is the card everybody signed. Photograph it and only the handwriting is lifted onto the cover, leaving behind the paper, the coffee ring and the shine of the biro, so thirty signatures survive the desk being cleared in March. The company logo cover is the formal version of the same idea, engraved as it stands with a name beneath it, for a present that comes from the firm itself. From one person, the world's best colleague and best colleague ever covers say what nobody says out loud in an office, and they say it about the person, with the leaving left out of it.

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Write it for the year after next

The line under the name is where these presents go wrong, usually by being about today. "Happy retirement" is accurate for about a fortnight; "Book two" is still right in 2035. Some of these covers hand over a motto instead, and the same test applies. Be Brave, Be Kind, Be Bold is one line built from three words you shuffle or write yourself, and the empowering quotes cover does the same job in one longer sentence about getting on with it. Both suit somebody who would happily keep a motto on a desk, and both are wasted on somebody who finds being told to be brave slightly insulting. Whatever you type, read the preview out loud once. The cover gets read every time the book is opened, long after the leaving do.

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A leaving date is fixed and usually known weeks ahead, so this is the easiest occasion on the site to get in early for. Nothing here sits on a shelf; the book is engraved after you order it. You will not find a delivery date on this page, since the carriers set their own each year and any date we typed would be a guess. What dispatch and delivery take is set out on Delivery and returns.