A few weeks ago Insanely Livid sent me a letter. A real one, hand-written on proper writing paper, posted in an envelope. I found it in the mailbox - how lovely!
And on Friday, at the fair trade conference, I needed to write something down and I was lent, for a moment, a beautiful ink pen. The weight of it in my hand, and the wonderful smooth flow of the ink onto the paper took me aback, and made me happy. They had us use ink pens at school because they said it made for better handwriting - and I think they were right. More careful writing, anyway (though our fingers were always ink-stained). But it's years since I used a real pen. The last time I owned one was eighteen, maybe nineteen years ago. It was a gift from a friend, and I did love it, but alas I lost it - it fell out of my pocket in a marketplace in Grenada. Well, if you're going to lose something as intrinsically romantic as an ink pen it had better be somewhere exotic, I suppose.
Vanishing arts - handwriting, and letter-writing. Why did I need to borrow that pen the other day? To jot down an email address, of course.
My father still writes his books with a fountain pen and a jar of Parker Quink - then my mother retypes it all on the computer to email to the publisher.
ReplyDeleteI remember my first ball point pen-a very expensive 21st birthday present and how wonderful it seemed. Even refills cost a lot more than ink!
ReplyDeleteI resurrected my fountain pen just last week to write my mum's 70th birthday card - biro didn't seem appropriate. Might even get round to writing another letter.
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