Writing

I feel this pen is worthy of being put on the household insurance, so precious is it to me.
As His Lordship remarked, I could have chosen a pair of shoes more quickly than the time it took me to select this pen from the myriad on offer in the Pen Shop.
The colour was the last thing on my mind; it was the shape of the nib that was all important.

My writing has an unfortunate knack of changing completely with different implements, giving me in the process several contrasting personalities.

My first writing implement was a slate pencil with its inherent rasping squeak on the accompanying slate as I laboriously formed my first letters at the age of 5.
Pencils followed, and then scratchy pens which had to be dipped in ink wells and either gave disfiguring blots or left almost invisible writing.
I imagine we felt relief at the advent of cheap biros , but they tended to slip so easily over the paper that my handwriting went down hill fast.

Yesterday I was looking for a pen nib that produced my best handwriting.
This stubby nib was the very thing short of an Italic nib to provide this : it gives me just the right sort of traction on the paper, even if the latter is shiny and slippery.

There was a time at school when our English teacher thought that the writing in our essays would be more legible if we wrote in beautifully sculpted Italic writing with the special Italic pens that were beginning to sell.
Some of us were persuaded to give it a try. Unfortunately our Chemistry teacher was not enamoured by these artistic efforts and under duress we reverted to the writing we had been taught as small children.
To this day I claim to recognise my fellow pupils from the received school writing on the envelopes at Christmas.