Let's redress the balance a bit, after the pious rant in my last post!
There's pleasure to be had, lots of it, using old stuff in the old way. One of this morning's tasks reminded me of this truth.
Water Dragon is my fountain pen, the Parker 51 I bought online from a Yorkshire dealer in January 2019. She cost me £125 - a fair sum for a pen made in late summer/early autumn 1955! Water Dragon is only three years younger than me, and presently sixty-five years old. Not terribly old in fountain pen terms, but veteran if not actually vintage. And certainly a model universally regarded as one of the best-looking and most practical post-war pens made, if not the best for its purpose ever made.
My motive? I wanted to write with a pen that would last a lifetime, and not with a disposable pen. I wanted inexpensive running costs. I wanted to write in style, with something very personal. A proper writing instrument that would be good for my handwriting. And I wanted something that harked back to different days, reviving a pen fetish I had at school in the 1960s.
Fountain pens were compulsory then, even though good, smooth-writing, leakproof ballpoints had been around since the mid-1950s. I didn't resent the compulsion one bit. It was one draconian school rule that I actually liked. It made the grammar school regime tolerable. I loved the little green-and-gold Parker pen I had then, and thoroughly enjoyed the ritual of filling it up with ink that had a chemical aroma I appreciated. I wore that pen out.
Others followed. I remained a fountain-pen fan beyond my hated schooldays, right through my career in fact. It was only retirement, and increasing use of handheld organizers, and (later on) smartphones, that made me stop. I used disposable rollerballs for odd jottings.
But in early 2019 all that changed. As with the recent resurrection of my Leica D-Lux 4 camera, I wanted something extra. Driven by curiosity and a new-found determination to do things differently, I found it was easy to buy a good example online of the pen I'd always wanted at school. A Parker 51. In a nice colour too. And there was the fun of making a pen-case for my new friend, and getting the right ink.
Surprisingly, new fountain pens were still being sold - a huge range, not by any means all upmarket and fiendishly expensive - although most of the selling was now online. Pen counters in department stores had largely vanished. As had most of the department stores! But any decent art shop had ink bottles. As did W H Smith and Ryman. So I was in business, and could clearly remain so. The demand for fountain-pens and their paraphernalia may have reduced in the twenty-first century, but it was still healthy in the artistic and creative sphere. And for individualistic types like me.
I gave away my unused disposable rollerball pens, and resolved to use only Water Dragon - whatever the writing occasion. Hence the pen case I made, so that she could be carried around in safety: upright and free from shocks in my bag, and protected from harm.
Did I stick to that plan? Yes indeed! I have made a point of it. It's been easy and delightful to use Water Dragon often - many times a day, in fact - because it's surprising how often a quick paper note is needed, rather than a keyboard-made record. And nothing else will do so well for birthday cards, for visitor comments in churches, and for compiling shopping lists that look stylish when scooting around Waitrose.
So hurrah for old tech! (Well, at least the right sort in the right place!)
