MY LATEST ACQUISITION

I love writing, and although I have lots of lovely ball point, gel and felt tip pens, nothing writes quite like a lovely fountain pen.

I have been writing in my journal again, but last week my Parker pen started to leave horrible blobs of ink on the page - it could be the the ink is old and has clogged the pen or maybe it needs another service, but I decided that it would probably cost more to have this done than to buy a new pen - not that I was thinking of doing that, you understand.

That is, until yesterday!  After a great morning with my friend, Gill, when we went through two chapters of the book, I left Mr. HCB at home sitting at home quietly doing a jigsaw and a sudoku, after his busy morning in the garden, and went off to the local Designer Shopping Mall where we had arranged to meet our grandson after he finished work to have a coffee catch-up after his adventures in Scotland over Christmas.  

I decided that I would walk some of the way, to get my steps up (sorry for boring you but in fact, I did 11,834 yesterday!) and then had a good wander round - but nothing caught my eye EXCEPT a beautiful Sheaffer fountain pen.  I already have a Sheaffer pen, but it has a slight crack in the barrel, so whenever I use it, I get ink all over my fingers, which is difficult to remove.  I asked Cathy, the young lady serving in the Cross Pen Shop whether it would be worth having it looked at, but when I told her that I had had it since I was at school, her comment was that it was quite old!  I told her that I preferred the term “vintage”!

I tried one of the fountain pens that happened to be on offer and when she told me how much it was, I said I would speak to my husband when I met him later - which of course, I did - and his comment was “Why didn’t you just buy it?”  So, we hot-footed it back to the shop before we met our grandson, and bought the pen and also a bottle of turquoise ink - so I am delighted.  I was up early again this morning and have already written three letters.  Emails and texts are OK but nothing beats a hand-written letter!

We met our grandson, which was great, and then as a bonus, along came our granddaughter and her Mum - so quite a party!  A good day all round - and I got a new pen too.  I’ve been sitting down for too long now though, so need to get out and do some walking!  Mr. HCB, of course, wants to do more work in the garden so guess it’s going to be a solo walk today, but then, I do need to post my letters!

“I take pride in using fountain pens. 
They represent craftsmanship 
     and a love of writing. 
Biros, on the other hand, 
     represent the throwaway culture 
          of modern society, 
               which exists on microwave ready-meals 
                    and instant coffee.”

Fennel Hudson: A Writer's Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 3