Coming Home – to pens and ink

I am addicted to fountain pens and ink.

I grew up reading the old classics all of which featured a heroine who was a girl (like me) who sat at her desk at the end of each day and wrote (like me) with her pen and ink (…you see what was missing!). I desperately wanted the pen and ink. I just knew that it was the key piece to the picture I was recreating, then I could be like Jo March and ‘scribble my stories’. My first fountain pen was part of a calligraphy set in my early teens. I did try to learn calligraphy. All of my high school assignments are decorated by headings in elaborate script and I loved it. But whenever I picked up that pen what really happened was that I wrote. Pages and pages of angsty teenage poetry and prose in my normal cursive handwriting.

I went to Germany on exchange and was thrilled to discover that my classmates wrote with fountain pens charged with cartridges of ink. Stationery heaven! In that first week I was standing in front of multiple (!) displays of fountain pens made for teenagers like me. Brightly coloured and inexpensive and perfect. I bought my pen and boxes of ink and used it to write schoolwork, myriad letters home, my travel journal. 

The addiction grows with use.

The third pen is my most precious possession. On my 21^st birthday my boyfriend shyly handed me a beautifully wrapped box. Naive young woman as I was then my first thought was that it was jewellery and to my never-ending shame my face fell when I opened it to see revealed a glistening black and gold Waterman fountain pen. If he ever reads this please know that exquisite pen never leaves me, it writes my most intimate thoughts and my most heartfelt letters. No pen I have ever had writes more smoothly and, I am convinced, no pen has ever conveyed my thoughts more articulately than that Waterman pen. We’ve been through a lot together and I dream just by holding it in my hand.

There were many years when I drew ridicule for my fountain pen for not only were we in the heady early days of computers we had had access to reliable (ie cheap, clean and disposable) ballpoint pens for decades. Many a friend furrowed their brow in confusion when I brought out my fountain pen or wondered over the ink on my fingers from a particularly messy refill experience. 

“You do know we’re in the twentieth century now, don’t you?” was a wry comment thrown my way. I was young enough to be embarrassed and hid my pens as if they were contraband but I never stopped using them. 

The addiction is resistant to shame.

I flirted with nibs dipped in ink. Nan gave me the one she wrote with at school in the 1930s, the orange handle doubling as a letter opener. The flighty individuality of nibs taught me about the importance of flow and pressure and confidence; when that nib hits the paper you need to keep it moving surely and thoughtfully. The scratch of nib on paper is still exciting to me. It is the sound of creativity.

As with all addictions, this one only grew with time. The internet brought with it a global economy and, for me, access to all the ink and pens and paper I could want after watching it fade into a lost past. I had begun asking my friends in Germany to send me ink cartridges  and sourced a precious bottle of ink at a specialist art supply shop. I made every page count for who knew when I might be using the last bottle of ink? 

The addiction grows in scarcity.

Now I scroll through Instagram and see exquisite displays of stationery depicted as art by fellow old fashioned pen and ink officianados. I use Google to find supplies and have literally thousands of options to choose from, online stores and brick and mortar shops and writing groups and even, I now find, fountain pen appreciation societies. 

The addiction is mainstream.

I think I’ve grown into my old-fashioned ways, they fit perfectly in my 21^st century life. My pen and ink sit companionably alongside my laptop. I carry a fountain pen with my headphones and a spare USB. People still look twice when I uncap my pen and reveal a nib but the most I get is a shrug  and, just sometimes, the comment ‘each to their own.”

I plead guilty to spending money on yet another pen and to stashing bottles of ink in my desk. I write this as a full account of my descent into high functioning addiction and offer no apology nor intent to change.