So it's been hardware nightmare after hardware nightmare for a while but I've finally managed to get a touchscreen and an SD card hooked up to an ESP32 on a breadboard which is enough hardware to get the software working!
I've managed to get a rough proof of concept launcher working which just whacks a button on a screen and then executes the applications stored in /sd/apps using python's execute() function. I will admit that when I first tapped "Notes.py" and it actually worked I burst out of my office and made my wife get the camera.
My next goal here will be to properly build a simple notes application which will involve multiple screens and reading and writing to the SD card. Once I've finished that, I'll look at how I want to handle time and then it's calendar time!