That lovely smell has gone

Now - as I finally have the opportunity - three little posts.

The first laments a lost smell of the nostalgic kind that was there in my schooldays, and right through my adult life, but seems now to have disappeared. I speak of the smell of black Parker Quink ink. 

I have always used fountain pens that fill from a bottle. Yes, it has become terribly old-fashioned to do that. Since the 1960s, children and students - if they use fountain pens at all - or any pen for that matter - have embraced ink cartridges to save themselves the fiddly ritual of bottle-filling. Only fountain pens enthusiasts have been buying bottles of ink in adulthood, lately online, as proper 'pen shops' (as opposed to pen and pencil sections in art and stationery shops) have become a rarity. 

Fountain pens themselves have not died. They nearly did. They nearly became curios at 'antique fairs'. But there were always individualists who stubbornly or defiantly clung to old things and outmoded ways. Besides, the posh end of the fountain pen market was never likely to vanish: how else would world leaders sign trade or peace treaties? There were in any event calligraphists who loved their pens, and were prepared to experiment with nibs and exotic inks. And diehards (myself among them) who preferred to write cards and letters and shopping lists with a proper fountain pen, rather than a despised ballpoint of some sort.

There is much modern enthusiasm (among some in the youngest generations) for any 'analogue' device that recreates a retro experience. Or feels as if it does. This is why such things as vinyl records and turntables, and more lately old cameras from the 1990s and 2000s, have become cool objects of desire. I don't know whether this actually extends to things to write with, like a classic fountain pen, but flourishing a fountain pen in the right company is surely an instant talking-point in 2024. Like wearing a vintage watch that ticks. 

In a world of soulless electronic gadgets that have only a short lifespan, a device that might be many decades old inspires respect and possibly awe. My own fountain pen, Water Dragon, a Parker 51 (now there's a classic!) was made in Parker's Newhaven factory - not very far away from me - in July, August or September 1955. It's therefore sixty-nine years old, just three years younger than me. But it still works perfectly. And I love the weekly ritual, every Monday morning - whether at home or on holiday - of filling my fountain pen. It has to be done carefully, just so, but it's not hard to do, and I never spill any ink. My 'reward', if you can call it that, is to smell the ink in the bottle before I screw the top back on. 

Ah, that smell. Until I started the latest bottle - they last for ages - the ink always had a chemical odour, hard to describe, but pleasant. You imagined a secret formulation that had stood the test of time. A formulation that was good for the pen: it did not, for instance, clog up the tubes inside, nor attack the rubber sac containing the ink. I reasoned that an ink as benign as that couldn't be harmful to one's nostrils! 

But something has happened. The ink in my latest bottle is different. It has no smell. It's just as black; it writes just the same; but that slightly acrid whiff has been lost. Parker must have been forced to reformulate. Perhaps in response to some EU regulation. (The ink is made abroad now) Or perhaps one of the ingredients has become too expensive, and a substitute has been used. Whatever the reason, my Monday morning filling ritual is now missing a key element, that lovely smell. Parker Quink has lost an important part of its character.

Oh well, change is inevitable and one must just adapt. So far as writing with it is concerned, Quink is still a good ink, and I'm not going to fill up with something else simply because Quink is no longer quite the same. But this could now be the time to experiment. There are many alternative inks I could use, available online, and reviews on Websites or YouTube to guide me. Maybe they smell good too!

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