Travelling Heavy

'Your job is to pack your things for the holiday.'

Also sprach the Inkette as she left for work this morning. The Penquod is nearly ready to leave for its summer vacation, but I have not yet placed an item of clothing into the suitcase. If nothing has changed by the time the Inkette returns from work this evening, there will be a lot of broken ink bottles, but I'm afraid that I'm struggling to get the job done. Pictured above, in fact, are the only items that I have set aside so far for the holiday:

- One Clairefontaine notebook. Who could possibly resist stationery that's marketed under the slogan 'Douceur de l'écriture'? I must, inkidentally, publicly thank an extremely generous reader of Ink Quest who, after reading last Saturday's post, kindly offered to send me an Italian leather journal for my trip. The offer arrived just hours after I had bought the Clairefontaine pocket book, though, and I'd hate the thought of anyone actually taking time out of his or her day and spending hard-earned money to post luxury items to the author of a blog who does little but send forth misanthropic, barbaric yawps about how the world is persecuting him.

- One tin of Herbin Lie de Thé ink cartridges. Every beach holiday needs a muted brown ink, I feel. And if its name refers to the dregs left miserably in the bottom of a tea cup when the good stuff has disappeared, all the better. I have, inkidentally, just emailed the Herbin ink company to suggest that a new Anglo-French hybrid colour, 'Plague de la plage', be launched for summer 2009.

- One Visconti Van Gogh fountain pen. Chosen largely because the unusual clip could double as a harpoon if the coast of Cornwall is suddenly besieged by sharks. And it's always good, when soaking up the sun, to be reminded of a man who cut off his own ear.

- One copy of Samuel Beckett's Complete Dramatic Works. The ultimate 'beach read' for plage-phobes. I'll probably start with Happy Days, in which Winnie spends the play buried up to her waist, and later her neck, in a giant mound. (The stage directions don't specify what the mound is made of, but the presence of a parasol leads me to imagine that it is, appropriately enough, sand.) And perhaps I'll end the holiday by setting up a deckchair in the middle of the village and giving a reading of Krapp's Last Tape: 'Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back'. (All of this sung to the tune of 'La Macarena', of course.)

Beyond this, though, who knows? I simply can't decide what to put into my suitcase for the holiday. How can I possibly know today what I will need next week? No matter how many items I pack, I will inkevitably long for something left at home as soon as we arrive at our sunny destination.

As usual, Roland Barthes had the right idea. As I briefly noted in a post dating from January 2007, the obsessive lover of fountain pens, stationery, and ink recreated his Parisian study with meticulous care in his holiday home in Urt:

Autre Argo : j’ai deux espaces de travail, l’un à Paris, l’autre à la campagne. De l’un à l’autre, aucun objet commun, car rien n’est jamais transporté. Cependant ces lieux sont identiques. Pourquoi ? Parce que la disposition des outils (papier, plumes, pupitres, pendules, cendriers) est la même : c’est la structure de l’espace qui en fait l’identité.

[Another Argo: I have two work spaces, one in Paris, the other in the country. Between them there is no common object, for nothing is ever carried back and forth. Yet these sites are identical. Why? Because the arrangement of tools (paper, pens, desks, clocks, ashtrays) is the same: it is the structure of the space which constitutes its identity.]

It's very simple, then: I have a day or two to duplicate every item in my possession for transportation to my holiday destination. Unlike Barthes, though, I don't actually own a second property, so the other fifty-one weeks of the year will find me looking for a large amount of storage space. What is to be done?

Perhaps the answer lies in an old joke from Steven Wright:

The other night, I came home late and tried to unlock my house with my car keys. I started the house up. So, I drove it around for a while. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over. He asked where I lived. I said, 'Right here, officer'. Later, I parked it on the freeway, got out, and yelled at all the cars, 'Get out of my driveway!'

Yes, dear readers, I am taking my house on holiday with me, putting the motor into the mortar. When people ask me where I'm staying while I'm away, I will say 'Right here, in my home'. 'Oh, you have a second home', they will reply. 'No', I will respond, 'just the one, but it goes everywhere with me. It's like a home from home.' I'm just about to ring the Cornwall Tourist Board to ask if they have any car parks big enough to take a house, and I should probably check the legal situation with the DVLA before we leave. ('Hello, DVLA? Could you tell me if my licence allows me to drive a building? And in which window should I display the tax disc? How many doors does my vehicle have? Well, one at the front, one at the back, and eight inside. Excluding wardrobes and the cat flap. Does it have a sunroof? No, just regular tiles. Have I made any modifications to the vehicle since I bought it? Yes, I've put up some bookshelves, taken up the carpet and painted the floorboards, installed Venetian blinds, and put some decking out the back. And we're having a loft conversion done later this year.)

Forget travelling light; this is all about travelling heavy.

Ink in use today: Abraxas Anthrazit.

PS (18 July): Honorary Penquod crew member Arty has suggested that I might also want to take with me for beach reading the 'lost' Samuel Beckett work described in an article in The Onion some time ago.

Book of Note

Take note, dear readers, that you will need to make the most of any entries appearing in this noted blog in the coming week, for the Penquod is preparing to sail to the south coast of England for a short summer break. Although I hate sitting on the beach as much as Larry David does (see the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'The Thong'), I have no doubt that the Inkette and Baby Ink will require my constant, uncomfortable presence sur la plage, so sneaking away to an internet café to update Ink Quest is going to be something of a long shot.

I have, of course, been giving great thought in recent weeks to my holiday pen, ink, and notebook. (I was pleased to discover that honorary Penquod crew member Stefan recently agonized over precisely the same matters before leaving for a vacation in California. He emailed me while soaking up the sun to inform me of the colours upon which he had eventually settled, but he added that he somehow forgot to take the chosen notebook with him. The last I heard from the frontier, he was having to make do with a cheap alternative from a convenience store; I would, given the circumstances, have abandoned the trip and flown home.) I usually take my Visconti Van Gogh with me when travelling on business, but I feel that something different is needed for non-work-related expeditions. I'm currently considering the eternally reliable Pelikan M200 fountain pen, and I'll obviously need an accompanying ink that screams 'I hate summer and beaches'. Noodler's Heart of Darkness fits the bill, but I'm not keen on black inks, so perhaps Noodler's Nightshade will win out.

As for the notebook, well, I am going to buy a new one for the trip. (The Inkette appears to have purchased an entire wardrobe of beachwear, but I'm simply refusing even to contemplate a floral shirt, shorts, and summer shoes. What's wrong with brogues and cufflinks on the sand? And why does the merest whiff of seaweed lead most British men to believe that long trousers are now unnecessary? I will say this only once: shorts are for people partaking in sports. And if your name isn't Ben-Hur, you have no business wearing sandals.)

My decision to invest in a new notebook was partly prompted by a magnificent book that I've been reading this week. It's called Walter Benjamin's Archive, and it brings together, among other things, a wide range of materials from Benjamin's notebooks and files. While the work of some of the other members of the Frankfurt School tends to leave me cold, I've always had a soft spot for Benjamin. Few people have written more convincingly -- or more beautifully -- about the practice of collecting, about the love of material objects, and about the anguish of being separated from personal possessions. (If, incidentally, you don't know the story -- or stories, to be more precise -- about how Benjamin, a German Jew, died while fleeing from the Nazis in 1940, and if you don't mind allowing a dark shadow to fall upon your Saturday, you can find out more by clicking here.)

What I didn't know until now, however, is that Benjamin was a lover of fountain pens, notebooks, and ink. I've always had my suspicions that he was an inkthusiast, but confirmation of my feelings did not come until I read Walter Benjamin's Archive, which quotes at one point a letter written by Benjamin to Alfred Cohn in 1927: 'I carry the blue [note]book with me everywhere and speak of nothing else', he confessed. 'I am sure that there is nothing else of this kind as pretty in the whole of Paris...'

Seven of Benjamin's notebooks have survived, and Walter Benjamin's Archive contains many beautiful colour reproductions of some of their pages. As I looked at the images, two things repeatedly caught my eye. First, Benjamin evidently liked to experiment with different colours in the fountain pens that the volume tells us he prized. One sheet of paper -- which doesn't appear to be part of one of the seven complete notebooks -- sees him switching shades every few lines, as the first picture displayed above shows. The colours used are not named, sadly, but I assume that this is simply because the terrible turmoil of Benjamin's life means that such details are long lost. The second thing that struck me about Benjamin's notes was the handwriting itself. 'It is almost always precise and fine', note the editors, but they add that its size varies considerably. Beginning in the 1920s, he developed 'a penchant for small script'; the second image posted above shows a text from 1926, in which Benjamin's letters measure just 1-1.5mm in height. This makes them, the editors point out, 'difficult to decipher with the naked eye'. Such a style of writing posed problems for Benjamin, too: Jean Selz, the book adds, once recalled that 'he never found a pen that was fine enough, which forced him to write with the nib upside down'.

I have on many occasions hailed Roland Barthes -- who publicly confessed to buying sixteen bottles of ink in one afternoon, and who dismissed the ballpoint pen as only suitable for 'churning out pisse copie' -- as my great hero when it comes to the quest for the perfect ink. It would seem, however, that petit Roland now has a rival in the form of Walter Benjamink.

I will need to check my own archives before I can say whether or not the two ink- , pen-, and notebook-loving men were ever in Paris at the same time. Without the bookshelves of my office to hand, I cannot recall precisely when Barthes, who was some years younger than Benjamin, lived in the French capital. I know that he moved there in the mid-1920s, but I also know that tuberculosis took him away from the city to a sanatorium on a couple of occasions during what may well have been the period when Benjamin was in exile in Paris. And Barthes, if I recall correctly, was teaching in either Bayonne or Biarritz at some point in 1940 (the year in which Benjamin was forced to leave occupied France). It is possible, then, that the two inkthusiasts were never in the city simultaneously. Even if they were, it's unlikely that their paths would have crossed.

None of this, of course, stops me dreaming about Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin meeting by chance in a Parisian pen shop, communicating across the gap of generations and languages, comparing notes and notebooks. I will watch carefully for the inky-fingered ghost of WalteRoland when shopping this week for stationery.

Ink in use today: Aurora Blue; Noodler's Violet.

Teal thyself

In Marnie, one of Alfred Hitchcock's later films, the eponymous heroine experiences strange neurotic episodes whenever she sees the colour red. At one point, as the image posted above shows, she spills a single drop of red ink upon her sleeve. This is enough to provoke an outburst that alarms her colleagues. She is eventually cured when, thanks to a little help from a zoologist acting as a psychoanalyst, a repressed memory of a traumatic, bloody murder is uncovered. Now that her problem has been 'worked through', to use the language of psychoanalysis, she should be able to live happily ever after. (Note to readers who like to spot pens and ink in films: 'Tippi' Hedren is perhaps the inkiest of the Hitchcock heroines, for there's also a lovely moment in The Birds, which predates Marnie by a year, where a close-up shows her writing with an elegant Esterbrook fountain pen. I hereby propose that she be renamed 'Inky' Hedren.)

Longtime readers of Ink Quest may remember a post from May 2007 where I linked the sight of Waterman Blue-Black ink to the teal colour of the hospital scrubs that I was wearing when Baby Ink came rushing into the world. Unlike some, I don't mind the fact that Waterman Blue-Black is actually a teal-like shade, but I have found in the last year or so that I cannot use the ink without experiencing a Marnie-like flashback to the somewhat traumatic scenes that surrounded the 'ventousing' of Baby Ink after something like fifteen hours of labour. The Waterman bottle has, therefore, tended to remain tightly sealed and firmly repressed to a dark corner of my ink box.

I have, however, filled a pen with Waterman Blue-Black this morning, and I have written this entry in my notebook without experiencing a single neurotic inkident. Yes, dear readers, I have been cured. (Not of all of my neuroses, naturally; there are some problems that only death can solve.) Allow me to relate the event that led to the miraculous 'working through' of my issues with Waterman Blue-Black.

My sister gave birth in the early hours of yesterday morning, so the Family Ink made the short drive to see the proud parents and the new arrival yesterday evening. I have not been back to the hospital in question since Baby Ink was born there a little over fourteen months ago, so stepping back inside the maternity ward was a somewhat strange experience. When I first saw the room filled with mothers and their tiny babies, I could not believe that Baby Ink -- who was running around, desperately trying to switch off crucial medical equipment and open doors marked 'Private' -- had ever been that small (or that calm). But the sounds and smells of the ward brought back vivid memories of his newbornness, as did bumping into the midwife who was in the operating theatre when he was suctioned out. 'Did I really deliver him?', she said, looking down at the marauding toddler; I'm almost certain that she placed the emphasis upon the last word.

As we were making our way out of the ward, the most striking reminder of all presented itself to me, for I caught sight through a window of a woman wearing teal-coloured scrubs. Strangely, though, my first thought upon seeing the colour was not 'operating theatre'; it was 'Waterman Blue-Black'. Yes, dear readers, I had turned the tables on my symptom: for over a year I have been thinking 'operating theatre' whenever I've seen the colour, but last night I went back to the source of the association, glimpsed the shade, and thought 'Waterman Blue-Black'. This reversal of the usual neurotic sequence has somehow broken the spell: I can now use the colour without experiencing feelings of unease. Teal is now just the colour of ink. I have, by going back to the ward, managed to ward off anxiety. The association with scrubs has been scrubbed out. I have been restored to full health, tealed.

Ink in use without neurotic consequences today: Waterman Blue-Black.

PS: A small update on Sailor Grey. I still love the colour -- which is, with the exception of the old Omas Grey, one of the nicest greys around -- but I'm finding the ink a little dry at times. There have, for inkstance, been several occasions in the last couple of days when I've thought that my Sailor Sapporo pen has actually run out of ink, but a quick check of the converter has revealed plenty of Sailor Grey remaining.

Light-writing

Ink Quest is clearly photogenic.

There is, as I hinted in a recent post, a close link between writing and photography, for 'photography' literally means 'light-writing'. And if a writer, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, needs a room of his or her own to be able to work, it might be said that he or she requires a camera if pen is to be put successfully to paper. (It's a shame that the English 'room' bears no trace of the Latin 'camera' or the Greek 'kamara'. The closest we get, I suppose, is the somewhat obscure 'chamber'; the Italians and the French, who retire nightly to a 'camera' or a 'chambre', will see the link much more clearly.)

I've always wanted to be able to take elegant photographs and to flounce around the world with a Leica slung around my neck, but I just don't have the eye for it. Whenever I open and close the shutter, I somehow shut out all artistic traces. I briefly took photography classes in school, but these ended in total failure. (This may have had something to do with the fact that the teacher spent most of the lessons in the darkroom teaching us how to roll cigarettes for him. If anyone knocked on the locked door, he would shout, 'Can't you see the red light? We're developing films in here!' On one memorable occasion, he took two of us in his car to the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock. After lunch at a pub in Bath, where he let us order beer, he got pulled over by the police for speeding. What they didn't notice while they were busy warning him was that the speedometer needle had actually fallen off and been replaced -- I'm not making this up -- with a cocktail stick. Oh, the glory of the pre-risk-assessment era!) If my grade for the course had been sent out by telegram, the message would simply have read, 'F. STOP.'

My relationship to photography, therefore, is strictly a passive one; I can do nothing but admire the skill of others. When I was being taught how to roll cigarettes in a darkroom in a small Welsh town in the late 1980s, there was little opportunity to see proper photography. The local library stocked a few books, and a trip down to Cardiff could involve a visit to ffotogallery, which used to be on Charles Street, but has since relocated to a town several miles from the city. That, however, was as good as it got. These days, by way of complete contrast, magnificent photography is widely available on the internet. Honorary Penquod crew member introduced me to a brilliant site a couple of years ago, but I've somehow managed to forget its name. Arty, if you're reading, could you possibly refresh my memory?

One site whose name I can remember, however, is Flickr. Many of the millions of images held there are uninteresting family snaps, but there are some glorious pictures to be found. More specifically, there are some wonderful shots of pens and inks. (Graphy-photography?) If you've never seen a white Pelikan M400 with a Binderized nib, for example, you can click here and enjoy the view. Or, if the cap from an Omas 360 is what tickles your fancy, voilà! And ink is just as well represented. Here are two of the rather lovely (and costly) Caran d'Ache Colours of the Earth bottles, and here is a sultry shot of a Waterman bottle alongside an Omas fountain pen and a leather journal.

I am not ashamed to say that I have spent a great deal of my spare time admiring pens and inks on Flickr. 'Hello, my name is [censored]. I'm addicted to looking at penography on the internet'. While searching for pictures of Noodler's ink bottles yesterday (my wife was out; I was lonely), I was stunned to find a picture that made a reference to this very blog. More amazing still was the photographer's comment which stated that the image was actually inspired by (I'm sure that he meant inkspired by) Ink Quest.

It's astonishing to learn that this humble ramble of mine could inkspire anything. (Well, apart from contempt, which it never fails to inkspire in the Inkette.) I am delighted, dear Flickr photographer, dear light-writer of writers' delights, to discover that Ink Quest has lent something to your lens. And I offer above my tribute to your tribute, my return shot, my photo-copy.

Ink in use today: Sailor Grey.
Camera fumbled with today: Olympus FE-100.
Software used in an attempt to correct utterly shambolic original image: iPhoto.

Politinks

Inky fingers have never been an index to so much.

Ink Quest deliberately keeps its distance from political debates, partly because squabbles about politics seem constantly to ruin forums such as The Fountain Pen Network and Pentrace, and partly because I become less and less interested in political issues as time goes on. Walter Benjamin once noted that fascism aestheticizes politics and that socialism responds by politicizing aesthetics; inkism, I would add, aestheticizes aesthetics. It's all about the pleasures of deeply superficial matters such as the way that a certain ink catches the light, the glorious glissando of a nib across fine paper, or the cool weight of a stoppered bottle in the hand. There's no party, no parliament, no comradeship, dear readers, and inkism doesn't seek to alter the course of world history. Marx thought that philosophers had only ever interpreted the world and that the point was to change it; inkists just want to be left alone to make elegant lines on paper.

I couldn't help noticing this weekend, however, that ink has unwittingly found itself at the very heart of the political scandal in Zimbabwe, for a front-page article in the Guardian newspaper reported -- and offered photographic evidence to confirm -- that indelible ink was being used to stain the fingers of voters in the general election. 'They said they would come to see if we voted,' said one resident of Harare. 'They know if we went to vote we would have to vote for the president. They were watching.' The article went on to add that one brave Zimbabwean had tried to trick Mugabe's henchmen by not voting and instead smearing his fingers with ink from a ballpoint pen.

As a lover of ink (and a loather of ballpoint pens), I naturally wanted to know more about the kind of ink used to stain the fingers of all those who had cast their votes. The newspaper reported that it was indelible, but no more details were offered. Was it a special, unique colour made by Zanu-PF in a secret ink factory, or was it a readily available brand? If it was the latter, does a well-known ink company now have ink on its hands because it has become Robert Mugabe's colour of choice?

A global debate about how best to respond to the re-election of Mugabe is now raging. Some have proposed an Iraq-style invasion by the bringers of light; others have suggested intensifying economic and cultural sanctions against the country. It occurs to me that inkists wishing to show solidarity with the oppressed people of Zimbabwe find themselves in a rather difficult position. A neat, media-friendly way to signal outrage at the way in which the election was conducted would be to stain one's fingers with ink and refuse to let the colour fade until Mugabe has been deposed. (Tabloids would inevitably come up with headlines such as 'Giving Mugabe the Finger'. Le Monde could have 'Un doigt d'encre -- on doit le faire', perhaps.) But inkists, of course, always already have ink-stained hands, so the power of the statement would be diminished considerably. As George Costanza once noted, in an episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Calzone', it's only worth giving a tip in a restaurant if the waiter or waitress actually sees you going to the trouble of giving the tip:

GEORGE: So, let me ask you a question about the tip jar. I had a little thing with the calzone guy this week. I go to drop a buck in the tip jar, and, just as I am about to drop it in, he looks the other way . And then, when I am leaving, he gives me this look -- 'thanks for nothing'. I mean, if they don't notice it, what's the point?

JERRY: So, you don't make it a habit of giving to the blind?

GEORGE: Not bills.

It would seem, then, that any inkist who wishes to enter the political arena and publicly register his or her outrage at the situation in Zimbabwe will need to come up with a different tactic. But this is where I cannot help, dear readers, for political strategy appears nowhere on my list of skills. ('Staining my fingers with ink', however, is up there in the top five, surrounded by 'Enticing people to persecute me', 'Ruining social occasions with misjudged comments', 'Finding the cloud that surrounds the silver lining', and 'Eternal complaining'.) You inky-fingered souls will need to devise your own plan of action. Now, you'll have to excuse me because the postman has just delivered my bottle of Sailor Grey ink from The Writing Desk. I am about to enter the inking booth, open the bottle, and inkevitably stain my fingers.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Sequoia.
Ink shortly to adorn hands: Sailor Grey.

PS (1.45pm): The Sailor Grey has now been tested (and I managed only to get a small amount on my thumb). It's a truly delightful grey, and it is very much a grey grey; there's no chance of this colour being mistaken for black. It's not as pale as the ghostly Herbin Gris Nuage, though, so it should be suitable for documents that need photocopying. This is one ink that certainly gets my vote.

PPS (3 July): It would seem that I'm not the only one without an interest in politics. While shaving this morning, I heard a hilarious interview on the radio with Gemma Garrett, the current Miss Great Britain who has now decided to branch out into politics by standing as a candidate for the Miss Great Britain Party in the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election. I cannot find a dedicated page for the party, but I did manage to discover a section of the Miss Great Britain website where a manifesto includes the following items:

- Compulsory health and beauty education to improve the looks of Britons;
- A British Bank Holiday which encourages people to look fabulous for the day.

You have to admire a candidate who stands on such tickets while dismissing David Davis' opposition to the 42-day detention policy as a 'trivial obsession'. When asked by BBC radio if she knew the names of key political figures in Westminster, Miss Great Britain confessed that she didn't, before adding that she wasn't actually interested in politics. A desire to make Britain more glamorous. A general air of superficiality. An avowed dislike of political issues. It's like I'm looking in a mirror.

Licence to Ink

Never get off the train.

Readers of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and viewers of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now will know that it's better never to get out of the boat. I haven't travelled by boat since a school trip to France in 1988 involved taking a ferry from Dover to Calais, but I found myself considering not getting off the train on Wednesday afternoon.

I was on my way to do some external examining at a university in the north of England, and I found myself at one point on a train bound for Nottingham. I knew that I had to change services long before the train reached its destination, but I started to wonder, somewhere between Crewe and Birmingham, what would happen if I stayed in the carriage until the train reached its terminus. These thoughts arose because I already knew, thanks to a fellow member of the Fountain Pen Network, that the city to which I was actually travelling is hopeless for ink. Don't expect to find anything but Quink, I was warned. Nottingham, by way of contrast, is home to Pen Sense. While I have never been fortunate enough to visit this shop, I have only ever heard good things about it -- some say it's the best pen shop in the UK -- and the Inkette bought me some Montegrappa and Mont Blanc ink from the store when she stayed in the city a few years ago. Couldn't I just pretend to the university awaiting my presence and signature that I fell asleep and ended up in a different part of the country? Would it really matter if dozens of students couldn't get their final degree results because their external examiner had gone missing ink action?

I decided that the Nottingham detour would have to remain a fantasy, but it wasn't long before I started to consider another devious plan, this time involving the 'accidental' missing of my connection at Birmingham New Street. As I mentioned in an entry from almost exactly a year ago (when I was making the same journey, ink fact), a branch of The Pen Shop lies not too far from New Street ... but far enough to make getting there and back in ten minutes an impossibility. (Note to CEO of The Pen Shop: please get someone who knows how to punctuate to design your website. It's no good claiming that 'writing is for ever' if the writing on your site is forever marred by a total disregard for basic punctuation.) As the train pulled in to the strange subterranean platform at Birmingham, I gave serious thought to a crazed dash over to The Pen Shop (and an accompanying phone call to the university to tell them that I would be several hours late), but my interfering superego intervened and I ended up using the ten minutes between trains to cheer myself up with an espresso and a pastry, and by enjoying the fact that train tickets, as the image posted above shows, now use the London Underground typeface on the reverse, even if bought outside London. (Have, inkidentally, people been misreading Anna Karenina all these years? Does she throw herself underneath the train simply because she doesn't have time between connections to go and buy some ink from a nearby -- but not quite nearby enough -- shop? Have love, obsession, and paranoia nothing to do with the tragedy? We're told at one point that her estranged husband is a connoisseur of writing instruments, so perhaps Anna has similar inkterests. Maybe they first met over a bottle of ink in a Moscow pen shop. Note to self: pen fat prequel to Anna Karenina entitled Kareninka v. Kareninka: The Stationery Years.)

After I had checked into my hotel and unpacked the three pens stowed away for the trip (next to my shiny new travelling shaving brush), I walked down to the taxi rank near the bus station in order to make the final part of my journey to the university. On the way I noticed a small art supply shop. Even though I'd been warned about the dire ink situation in the city, I decided to call in and make some inkquiries.

'Do you have any ink for fountain pens?', I asked the men at the counter.

'Yes', one of them replied, pointing at a small shelf behind me. 'We have some Parker Quink over there.'

'Do you have anything that isn't Quink?', I asked, trying (but inkevitably failing) not to sound rude.

'Uh, yes', he answered. 'Some of those inks next to the Quink should go through a fountain pen okay.'

My hopes raised, I turned and bent down to inkspect the shelf. All I could see were bottles of Winsor and Newton drawing ink. I got out of there as quickly as I could, making the sign of the nib in the air as I went. The horror! The horror! Never get out of the boat.

Let's be perfectly clear about this: Winsor and Newton drawing inks will not 'go through a fountain pen okay'. They will destroy a fountain pen by causing disastrous clogging. To tell a customer that such shades are suitable for use in a delicate fountain pen is a little like informing a driver of a petrol-powered car that 'diesel will be fine' in the tank.

This, ink fact, is not the first time that I have heard such idiotic advice handed out: the Inkette was told precisely the same thing when looking for ink for me in an art shop in Oxford a couple of years ago. I wonder, then, if anyone who sells ink should have to obtain a licence to do so. Alcohol cannot be sold (in the UK, at least) unless a special permit has been secured, and I'm pretty sure that pubs and bars still have, even though some of the country's licensing laws have been relaxed in recent times, to display the name of the licensee above the door. Couldn't the practice be extended to anywhere that sells ink? We fearless defenders of the ancient nib often spend considerable amounts of money on our writing instruments, but our simple inkquiries about colours sometimes place our precious pens in peril. When I walk into a pen shop, I want to see the name of a properly vetted and licensed ink seller above the door, and I want to know that any questions I might have will be answered by someone who knows what he or she is talking about. No more quackery! No more licentiousness! Instead of the chaos, the licence. Instead of the lie, sense.

Ink in use today: Noodler's FPN Tulipe Noire.
Ink used yesterday to sign students' degree certificates: Noodler's Sequoia.

PS: As my journey led to no new ink, and as my good friend and honorary Penquod crew member Eileen always seems to blow all of her external examiner's fee on a new fountain pen, I'm about to spend some of my honorarium by placing an order for some new ink with The Writing Desk. I know that I want some Sailor Grey, but I'll see if anything else catches my eye...

PPS (8.30pm): I have now ordered the Sailor Grey, and I will report back as soon as it arrives. I'm hoping for something that falls somewhere between Herbin Gris Nuage and Noodler's Lexington Gray, and I'd love the colour to be as magical as the old Omas Grey, but I can already sense the grey clouds of disappointment gathering.

'En(cre) abîme' en abîme

En(cre) abîme

Sans script

I was too Sans-guine.

Honorary Penquod crew member Stefan has emailed to let me know that he cannot see Ink Quest in its new Gill Sans form, presumably because he does not have the typeface installed on his machine. Because I hate the thought of Ink Quest's devoted legion of readers not being able to see what I can see, today's brief post comes with a snapshot of what appears on my screen when I look at yesterday's entry. As I said in the previous post, if you are currently sans Sans, I suggest that you become avec son Sans sans délai.

Ink in use today: Private Reserve Chocolat.

Type-ology

From Inkface to Typeface.

You have probably already noticed, dear readers, that Ink Quest looks a little different. After posting the previous entry about the phenomenon of Inkface, I noticed that it is possible to alter the template provided by Blogger for my inky ramblings. Most of the code was completely impenetrable to me, but I did spot the names of typefaces lurking deep inside the labyrinth, so I bravely decided to make some changes.

Longtime readers of Ink Quest will perhaps be a little surprised to see that I have chosen a sans serif typeface for the makeover, for I have railed against the horrors of Arial and its kind in several previous posts. I do, however, have a weakness for Gill Sans, mainly because of its association with the early Penguin book covers, and so I have now made this the typeface of Ink Quest. (I tried, inkidentally, to use Windsor Light Condensed, the magnificent face associated with the credits of Woody Allen's films, but Blogger would not recognize it. And I've just [6.25pm] learned, thanks to a kind fellow member of the Fountain Pen Network, that you will need Gill Sans on your machine in order to see the blog as I'm seeing it. If you are currently sans Sans, I suggest that you become avec Sans avec vitesse.) While I was up to my neck in HTML code (if that's what it was), I also, after a few false starts, managed to make a few small changes to the right-hand sidebar of the blog. I hope that you like the clean, modernist reinkarnation of Ink Quest, dear readers.

Coinkidentally, we happened to spend yesterday evening watching Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's brilliant film about censorship, corruption, resistance, and betrayal in the final days of the German Democratic Republic. I'm sure that there's a 'human interest' story about a brave Stasi officer in there somewhere, but my inkhuman and misanthropic eye was naturally caught by the significance of typefaces and ink to the plot. I don't want to give too much away, simply because I wouldn't want to ruin the film for any inkthusiasts who have yet to see it, but I can probably reveal without causing too much damage that a typewriter used to produce an article that is critical of the East German regime plays a crucial role in the narrative. The state officials are so outraged by what the anonymous author has said about life to the east of the Wall, ink fact, that they call in an expert to tell them the precise model on which the text was typed. In a wonderful scene, from which the first image displayed above has been taken, the individual in question reels off a list of authors and their typewriters, and then states that the offending machine is registered to no one in East Germany. (While life in the GDR evidently had its drawbacks, it occurred to me that this man had one of the greatest jobs imaginable. Can you imagine being asked at a party, 'What's your line of work?', and being able to reply, 'I report to the Secret Police about typefaces'? As the United Kingdom slips ever closer to the kinds of surveillance and state interference once found in the GDR, ink fact, I may finally have found the new career that I've been restlessly looking for in recent years. As soon as I've finished typing up this entry -- on an untraceable typewriter, of course -- I'll be throwing in the towel and sending my CV to Whitehall and offering to take up the post of Ink Monitor. At the drop of a hat, I will be able to tell MI5 the type of writing instrument and ink used by any one of the citizens of this country. Oh, wait ... as MI5 is already monitoring what's published on Ink Quest, I won't actually need to take the inkitiative; I'll just sit back and wait for the knock at the door in the dead of the night.)

As if this focus on typefaces were not enough, the final minutes of the film use an ink smudge to absolutely stunning effect. I really can't say too much about this inkident, as it would inkevitably spoil the surprise for those who have not seen Das Leben der Anderen. Instead, I simply offer the second image displayed above, and I would like to take this opportunity to praise Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for casting ink in such a crucial role in his film. Ink rarely does well on the casting couch -- look at how Hitchcock's Rebecca quietly erases most of the obsessive references to ink and handwriting found in du Maurier's original novel, for inkstance -- so it's refreshing to see a director who resists typecasting and is not afraid to blot his copybook by casting type.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray; Mont Blanc Racing Green.

Ink desired today: Rohrer and Klingner Scabiosa. Not long after I wrote the words displayed above, the postman delivered a letter from Seattle-based honorary Penquod crew member Anna, in which she proudly showed off her new haul of Scabiosa. It really is a beautiful dusty aubergine shade (I've also seen it described by the author of The Laurel Tree as having an 'understated and subtle lavender-grey hue'), and I will probably have to buy a bottle very soon. The only thing that makes me slightly uneasy, however, is the fact that Scabiosa is an iron gall ink, and I worry about what such a composition would do to my precious pens.

Inkface

In an inky tribute to the brilliant Sleeveface (brought to my attention by honorary Penquod crew member Arty), and in the light of my recent decision to transform my iMac's 'Photo Booth' application into 'Ink Booth', I present you with the above photograph, dear readers. The inkfamy has clearly gone to my head.

Inks in use today: Diamine Saddle Brown; Diamine Indigo.

Fountain-penknife

The knives are out.

A short post by my old friends over at Chimpomatic alerted me on Thursday to the 111th birthday of the endlessly faithful Swiss Army penknife. I have lost count of the number of occasions on which my little red angel has come to my rescue (perhaps predictably, the nail file has seen more action than the screwdriver), and I can't imagine life without it. One thing about the model that I own, however, has always annoyed me slightly: one of its gadgets is a miniature ballpoint pen, which is unveiled and retracted by the sliding of a small grey button. The first photograph displayed above shows the monstrosity primed and ready to leave ugly marks on a piece of paper.

Regular readers of Ink Quest will be familiar with my war against the ballpoint pen, and they will probably be muttering 'Here we go again...' to themselves at this very moment. But it is important that I launch angry words against the object in question today, dear readers, for, as an article in today's Observer newspaper points out, on 15 June 2008 it is precisely 70 years since Lazlo Biro took out a British patent for the vile plastic writing instrument -- I use the term loosely -- that is now often simply known as 'the biro'.

The article also reveals that Argentinian Inventors' Day is celebrated every year on Biro's birthday. (Even though he was originally from Hungary, Lazlo fled to Argentina during the Second World War, and died there in 1985.) With this in mind, and in the light of the proximity of the Swiss Army penknife's birthday, I have chosen to turn 15 June into Fountain-penknife Day. Each year on this date, fountain pen lovers around the world will bombard Victorinox, the company that makes Swiss Army knives, with letters (handwritten in real ink, of course) which demand the introduction of a model that replaces the ballpoint gadget with a real nib. (I've never actually dismantled a Swiss Army knife, partly because I'd probably need its screwdriver to put it back together again, but it looks like there's room inside for a standard-sized ink cartridge, or perhaps even a miniature piston-filling system.)

I have, with wild abandon, even manufactured a prototype, and I will be emailing the second photograph displayed above to Victorinox this afternoon. Before you can say 'knife', I have no doubt that they will recognize the fine craftsmanship (well, some masking tape and a spare Pelikan nib) involved, see the light, cut me a deal and a slice of the action, and rush the Fountain-penknife into production. I have high hopes; this doesn't feel like just a stab in the dark.

Ink in use today: Diamine Sepia.

PS: Ink Quest, as dedicated readers will know, recently marked the sad passing of the unique, heroic Humphrey Lyttleton. While I've been typing up this entry, I've been listening to 'Chairman Humph', a hilarious and moving tribute to him that formed part of Radio 4's 'Humph Sunday'. Before ending, in a beautifully judged moment, with Humph playing 'We'll Meet Again' on his trumpet, the programme reminded us of some of his finest quips (including the unrepeatable one about Lionel Blair and Twelve Angry Men) and, to my surprise, revealed that he had been a dedicated calligrapher. One of the contributors recalled how the signing of an autograph for a fan was no ordinary event, as Humph would always carefully craft a miniature work of art with his pen. We will not see his kind again.

Breathing Ink

What's past is present.

At the very end of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, in what are probably the most powerful and heart-racing pages ever written, the effects of old age catch up with Marcel. His life is aimless, his health has not been good, and he has, above all, still not become a writer. 'I knew myself to be worthless', he recalls. One afternoon, he attends a gathering held by the Prince and Princess de Guermantes, whose name has long held magical connotations for him. On his way to the Guermantes' drawing-room, he is suddenly overcome by 'involuntary memories': an uneven paving stone in the courtyard catapults him back to driving around Balbec, admiring the steeples of Martinville, and dipping a madeleine in herb tea, and a napkin that he uses to wipe his mouth while he waits in the library 'had exactly the same stiffness and the same degree of starch' as one used many years earlier in Balbec.

This re-awakens in him the desire to be a writer: 'the raw material of my experience [...] was to be the raw material of my book', he concludes. When he is finally invited into the drawing-room, however, everything changes. He does not at first recognize the people around him, even though his association with them stretches back many years. The guests, he notes, seem to have disguised themselves, put on make-up, and whitened their hair for the occasion. But Marcel slowly realizes that the people around him have simply grown old; they are no longer the young and beautiful creatures he remembers from his past. In a moving moment, he sees Gilberte's mother in front of him, only to discover that she is actually Gilberte herself, the little girl with whom he played in the Jardin des Champs Élysées as a small boy. Time has caught up with her.

And Marcel, too, for he now realizes that time itself will have to be the subject of the work he will finally write. Not sure if he has long enough left to complete the work, he none the less vows to begin to describe the place of people in time. Marcel has at last achieved his boyhood dream of becoming a writer, and he sets off in search of lost time.

I offer this brief summary of the final volume of Proust's epic because I had a decidedly Marcellian experience on Sunday afternoon. Because it was the Inkette's parents' forty-fifth wedding anniversary, the clan gathered for a celebratory meal at a restaurant in the town where the happy couple live. About half way through lunch, and as I bent down to pick up yet another piece of breadstick that Baby Ink had hurled contemptuously to the ground with a barbaric 'yawp', I caught sight of a few vaguely familiar faces on the other side of the room. I couldn't quite place them at first, though, so I casually took Baby Ink for a toddle past their table so that I could get a closer look.

They appeared upon closer inspection to resemble relatives of mine. More specifically, the woman looked like the daughter of my father's mother's sister. (His cousin, in other words.) The only problem was that the characters at the table seemed far too old to be who I thought they were. I remembered their hair as being dark, but what I saw before me was, as at the gathering attended by Marcel, strikingly white. Their faces and bodies looked too small, moreover. I returned to my seat, convinced that I had made a mistake.

A little later, however, I took Baby Ink outside to the children's play area. As I left the building, I found myself face to face with the people who resembled my relatives. They had moved to a table on the patio so that they could smoke. This time there was no doubt in my mind: these people were definitely part of my extended family. I had initially doubted their identities because I hadn't seen them since my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary party in 1985, and my memories of their appearances were, therefore, nearly a quarter of a century out of date. To be perfectly brutal, time has taken its toll upon them.

And clearly upon me, for they looked decidedly puzzled when I introduced myself. The last time they saw me, I had just entered the terrible teenage years. I can't remember much about the golden wedding celebrations where I last met them, but my guess is that I was probably wearing black, scowling, arguing with my parents, and longing to get home to Albert Camus, the only person who 'understood' me at the time. The individual who stood before them on Sunday, however, was in his late 30s, no longer skinny, and holding a representative of the next generation of Family Ink in his arms. (I did, rest assured, spend much of the rest of the afternoon scowling, arguing with my parents, and longing to get home to Proust, the only person who 'understands' me these days.)

But what does all of this have to do with the quest for the perfect ink?

On the way home from my Proustian encounter, I found myself remembering details of my father's family history. I have discussed in previous Ink Quest posts how my maternal grandfather, who left me a Parker 61 fountain pen when he died, is partly to blame for my obsession with writing instruments. What I haven't mentioned until now, I realized on Sunday, is that my paternal grandfather may well have fostered the accompanying fascination with ink, for he spent much of his life with inky fingers.

Although he had retired by the time I was born, my father's father trained and worked for many years as a printer. I believe that some of the socialist pamphlets produced in the South Wales valleys in the mid-twentieth century and now held in archives bear his name as typesetter and printer, ink fact. Retirement meant selling off most of the equipment associated with the profession, but one room in the tiny terraced house in which my grandparents lived when I was a child contained a small press and several trays of type. While I was not allowed to play with the machine, I do have vague memories of watching my grandfather set text and magically roll off a sheet of printed paper. What I remember with total clarity, however, is the smell of the room. Ink filled the air, and its scent even managed to squeeze under the door and out into the hallway.

Whenever I visited my grandparents, that is to say, I was breathing ink. Each time I filled my lungs, I would take in the heavenly scent that now leads me, albeit in a slightly different form, around the world in search of the perfect colour with which to write. (I'll conveniently ignore the Health and Safety issues involved in allowing a small child to inhale potent chemicals, I think. It was the 1970s -- asbestos was all the rage.)

With one grandfather giving me a Parker 61, and the other encouraging me to inkhale ink, it's little wonder that I grew up into the author of this blog. Petit Marcel had Balbec, the Jardin des Champs Élysées, and madeleines; I had the South Wales valleys, a beautiful fountain pen, and ink for air. He made Time the subject of his work; I have made ink the spur of mine. He was à la recherche du temps perdu; I am eternally à la recherche du ton perdu.

Ink being inhaled today: Private Reserve Chocolat; Diamine Indigo.

Inkquisitive

iSpy with my little iMac...

These words are brought to you courtesy of a new iMac, dear readers, for it transpired that the motherboard on my old model had died. Having suffered this catastrophe and a failed internal power supply within the space of three years, I briefly considered leaving the immaculate white church of Apple and replacing the defunct iMac with a cheap, ugly PC. Two weeks of working with ('against' would be more accurate) Windows on a borrowed laptop, however, caused me so many headaches that I soon realized I can never now turn my back on the elegant ease of OS.

Because three years have passed since I bought my last Apple, things have changed a little, and I'm still getting used to the new features and the redesigned keyboard. What's really unsettling me, though, is the little camera located above the screen. I know that this is intended to be used for video chatting, but I can't help feeling that I'm being watched while I type. The box in which my computer came tells me that it was 'Designed by Apple in California', but should the words 'according to the principles of Nineteen Eighty-Four have been added to the end of that sentence? I already know that the world is conspiring against me, but is it also now scrutinizing my every move? Am I, as I type these very words, being beamed to a secret monitor in a bunker owned by the Bic ballpoint company? Should I change my name to Inkston Smith and confess that I love Bic Brother?

Before he is defeated by Big Brother, Winston Smith tries to fight against the system. I am valiantly doing the same, dear readers. One of the truly disturbing features added to iMacs since I bought my last machine is a piece of software called Photo Booth. As its name suggests, the program uses the built-in camera to display upon the screen the face of the person sitting at the keyboard. When a red button is pressed, a countdown begins. After three beeps, just like in one of those passport photo booths, a snapshot is taken. Because there is a slight delay on the image, however, it's possible to see yourself blinking and even to watch your own eyes following themselves. Time slips slightly out of joint; you see yourself seeing yourself trying to catch up with the sight of yourself. (Old friend and erstwhile Lamy Safari champion Nixon will probably remember seeing a stunning video art installation in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with me about fifteen years ago, in which a much longer delay was introduced between two cameras positioned across the room from each other. As I remember it, by the time the viewer got to the second camera and looked at the screen next to it, he or she would catch sight of himself walking away from the first camera. We must have walked around in circles for about half an hour, endlessly chasing images of ourselves. I only wish that I could remember the name of the artist responsible for this dizzying work.)

But what does this have to do with ink and pens? Well, dear readers, I have rebelliously renamed Photo Booth. It is now known as Ink Booth, and it will be used, as above, to show the world the pen(s) and ink(s) in use in the study of Ink Towers at any given moment. The inquisitive little eye that watches my every move has been transformed into an inkstrument of inkquisition. I will need, clearly, to perfect my technique -- annoyingly, the camera is fixed to focus upon the face; doesn't the Apple corporation understand that what people are holding in their hands is much more important than the human visage? -- and work out an easier way to hold up my writing instrument and bottle and simultaneously press the button on the mouse, but the photograph none the less allows you to see that I am using my Stipula I Castoni fountain pen and Visconti Sepia ink today. (I haven't used the colour in question for a long time, but a recent conversation with honorary Penquod crew member Stefan, who has fallen in love with Visconti Blue, has led me back to the most striking bottle in inkdom.)

Ink Quest: putting the graph back in photograph.

Ink in use today: Use your eyes.

A Problem: Shared

I now know the true meaning of anarchy.

Forget Bakunin -- all you need to know can be found at a birthday party populated by one-year-old children. Several days ago we took Baby Ink to a gathering called to celebrate the first birthday of one of his friends. I hate parties more than just about anything else in the world -- unless, that is, Elaine Benes is dancing -- so I was not looking forward to the event. Above all, I was dreading having to talk to the other fathers, with whom I have nothing in common but successful sperm. Please don't misunderstand me: I don't think that I'm better than les autres papas; I simply know in advance that they will want to talk sport, drills and hammers, miles per gallon, horsepower, beards, beer, and the safest way to grab a crocodile. None of them ever wants to talk ink.

I decided, then, to hide behind Baby Ink and watch how he interacted with other children of a similar age. (Come to think of it, as I'm supposed to be interested in culture at a professional level, the gifts taken to the party are probably tax-deductible. Note to self: go through the bins to find the receipts.)

It was a feral affair. At the age of twelve months, children have no sense whatever of social convention, of how to behave towards others. Culture is, as Louis Althusser once put it, still lying in wait for them; its rules have yet to sink in and do their work. One of the ways in which this anarchic condition manifests itself, I noticed at the party, is in the blissful absence of the concept of sharing. If another child was playing with a toy that caught the eye of my untamed son, he would simply grab it for himself, enjoy it for a few moments, and then watch as it was snatched away by another toddling animal. At one point, perhaps fearing that a no-holds-barred wrestling bout was on the verge of erupting, one of the mothers (the dads were in the kitchen, huddled around the radio for the latest cricket score) shouted out, 'Share! Share nicely!'

I suppose that I will need before long to sit Baby Ink down, get out a copy of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and talk about why it's good to share. But how will I explain that it's not always appropriate, that sharing is good only sometimes. I find the rules of polite society puzzling at the best of times (I think that this is why I adore Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, as each relentlessly exposes the inexplicably arbitrary nature of social conventions), so I'm probably not the best person to be entrusted to explain the nuances of sharing to an anarchic infant.

I'll need to tell him, for instance, that sharing fountain pens is not the done thing. Personally, I don't really mind if someone trustworthy uses one of my precious objects to jot down a line or two -- I always think of the act in terms of a possible conversion for the church of ink -- but many people seem to view sharing their nibs as unthinkable. (Was Lévi-Strauss wrong? Is the prohibition against 'inkcest', not incest, the universal rule?)

Ink fact, the Inkette's younger sister, the Medinkette (so named because she is training to be a doctor), reported this week that she had noticed precisely this prohibition against sharing nibs during a meeting with one of her tutors. When the moment came for her to make a note of something, the Medinkette made it known that she didn't have a writing instrument with her. Empty-handed, she glanced longingly at the fountain pen held by her teacher, as if to say, 'Could I just borrow that for a second?' The tutor, sensing the bold attempt to cross a forbidden line, asked her if she was aware of the fact that he was holding a fountain pen. Sharing, he implied, was simply not an option.

Sharing, in other words, is sheared in two. (It's no accident that sharing and shearing share a linguistic root.) Any decent human being, the story goes, would share his or her last bottle of water if stranded with another person in the desert. Or, to invoke another scene from Seinfeld, it's polite to spare a square. But when a fountain pen is involved, a violent prohibition against sharing raises its head.

How will I ever explain this strange inkonsistency to Baby Ink? How will I incite him to share, to learn that only wild animals like lions keep everything for themselves ... but also, when ink is inkvolved, inkcite him to keep the lion's share for himself?

Ink not shared with anyone else today: Noodler's Aircorp Blue-Black.

Post-post Post

I realize that I have already entertained you with a post today, dear readers, but the post arrived in the mailroom not long after I had posted, and I was astonished to receive the envelope displayed above. It came from Egypt, where it evidently costs a lot to send a letter to the UK, for the whole of the back of the envelope was covered with stamps, as you can see. If it's going to be that expensive, I'm not sure that I'll carry on awaiting silent Tristero's empire. I have nothing inktelligent to say about the item; knowing that many Ink Quest readers are obsessed by stationery, I simply wanted to share the remarkable object that has left its stamp upon my day.

Oneirink

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Well, Santa Cruz, actually, but Daphne du Maurier's inkipit sounds so much better. (She also has a lovely inky image in the final paragraph of Rebecca, and colleague and honorary Penquod crew member Daphne has just pointed out to me that the entire novel is filled with references to handwriting.) As I have mentioned in previous entries, I lived in California for a year in the early 1990s. While I have visited Arizona, Illinois, and Nevada since that time, I've never made it back to the 'Sunshine State'. In my dream last night, however, I was back in Santa Cruz, the city that housed me for twelve months. And I was looking for ink. The only problem was that Santa Cruz no longer looked the same.

A little pre-oneiric background is necessary at this point. When I arrived in Santa Cruz in the summer of 1992, the downtown area was something of a building site, as rebuilding in the wake of the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake of late 1989 was very much still underway. Even though nearly three years had passed since the quake (the epicentre of which was just nine miles away from the city), some of the town's shops -- the magnificent Bookshop Santa Cruz, for instance -- were still housed in giant makeshift tents. (I didn't, inkidentally, know the full story of the bookshop's move until I read this newspaper story a few minutes ago.)

I understand from photographs and a recent conversation with a former resident of the city that the Santa Cruz of 2008 looks rather different from the Santa Cruz of 1992-3, and I've often wondered what it would be like to return after so long to the streets that I once knew so well, inevitably to find that my memory is no longer an accurate guide to navigating the town. (One of the clearest markers that time has passed, I think, is that whenever I now picture Broadway, a street along which I walked every day for a year of my life, the traffic is driving on the left; for the first few years after I returned here, it stayed in its correct position on the right-hand side of the road. This must be what Don DeLillo means by 'the film fade of memory' or what, perhaps more appropriately, Nabokov had in mind when he referred to 'terrific skiddings on the frozen road of time'.)

In last night's dream, ink fact, I recognized nothing. I can't remember the finer points of my reverie, but I do recall that I had just a couple of hours in the city before I had to leave for the airport in San Francisco. And I was faced with a dilemma: should I seek out my old haunts, or should I hunt down a pen shop and look for some interesting ink? In typically excessive fashion, I decided that it would be possible to do both.

I was not obsessed by fountain pens during my actual time in Santa Cruz, so I have no idea what, if anything, the city had or has to offer in terms of writing instruments, but in the dream I had a name of an apparently thrilling establishment jotted down on an index card. The street on which the shop stood was familiar to me, and so I set off to search for ink before paying a brief visit to my old house.

This is where the problems began. Because I had been dropped off in the centre of the reconstructed Santa Cruz, absolutely nothing looked familiar to me. The street names were the same -- Front Street, Soquel Avenue, and so on -- but they ran in different directions, looked completely unlike the roads I had known a decade and a half ago, and featured none of the landmarks from the good old days. Even though the Californian sun was beating down, I began to run frantically through the alien streets, shouting deliriously at bewildered residents, 'Ink and my old house. I need to find ink and my old house. In that order. The colours must come first'.

I awoke feeling anxious, exhausted, and melancholic. Anxious because what should have been familiar was unfamiliar. (Freud's uncanny, in other words.) Exhausted because I'd been running in my dream, and my refusal ever to run in real life must have come into collision with the oneiric me and caused some sports-related hormone -- dormant in my body since the early 1970s -- to flex its muscles. Melancholic because I always feel that way when periods of my life that are irretrievably lost feign graspable presence in my dreams.

When I recovered, however, my thoughts quickly turned to a topic that's related to the theme of my ramblings from 30 April, where I wondered about the being able to live parts of a life over again. What would be it be like to return to familiar places that I have not visited since the ink obsession blossomed?

I ended the previous entry with a quote from 'Unpacking My Library', Walter Benjamin's delightful essay about book collecting. Ink fact, the very first Ink Quest missive, from way back in September 2005, also referred to that piece (but to the part where Benjamin discusses how he, an obsessive collector, has become acquainted with strange cities while in search of books). What Benjamin doesn't discuss, however, is the phenomenon of going back to a town which is familiar, but which was explored only before an all-consuming quest developed.

The closest I can come to imagining what such an experience would feel like, I think, is to reflect upon my last few trips to Paris. (Newcomers to Ink Quest can catch up by reading this fairly recent post and then this older one.) On my first few visits to the city, I was not an inkthusiast, and so my list of places to visit did not inklude pen shops. Yes, dear readers, I wasted many hours in the Louvre, climbing the Eiffel Tower, and strolling along the boulevards in awe of le style haut when I should have been on the trail of le stylo. I have been back to Paris perhaps three times since the ink obsession developed, and so these later trips have taken me to parts of the city where I may never have ventured were it not for the inkthusiasm.

But the analogy doesn't quite work, for Paris has never been home to me, and, while I now know my way around fairly well, I'm always discovering new parts of the city. Santa Cruz, however, was my home for a whole year, and I did a lot of wandering around in those twelve months (mainly in search of books, burritos, and coffee). In all that time, I cannot recall seeing a single fountain pen or bottle of ink on sale (because I wasn't looking for them, of course), and I can only remember making one visit to a stationery shop. American readers will probably think that I am making the following anecdote up, but I am telling nothing but the truth when I say that I actually strolled into a stationers -- on Front Street, I think -- and, without remembering to switch to American English, actually asked where the 'rubbers' could be found. (British English must have become even more Americanized in the last fifteen years, as 'eraser' has become much more common, and 'rubber' has started to sheathe itself, so to speak, in the American sense.)

I still don't quite know what I would actually do if I had a limited amount of time to rediscover the city in question. Would I retrace the steps of the former me, or would I simply let the quest for the perfect ink guide the contemporary me? Would I go in search of lost time, or would I blot out the past with new wanderinks?

Inks in use today: Noodler's Aircorp Blue-Black; Noodler's FPN Tulipe Noire.
Ink in use thirteen years ago today: Probably some kind of hideous rollerball gloop.

Also Starring

Extra, extra -- read all about it.

Thanks to a complimentary remark about this blog made by a member of The Fountain Pen Network just over a week ago, the number of people visiting this humble website has rocketed in recent days. I'm surprised that the Blogger server has been able to handle the extra traffic, as it's my understanding that the esoteric Ink Quest has always been served by a small potato-powered abacus in the corner of abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town.

Before the blog is bought by Warner Brothers and turned into a big-budget action movie, I must quickly fulfill a request made by another member of The Fountain Pen Network who added a comment to the thread that launched a thousand new visits to my site. 'Can you please list all of your pens?', asked this person.

I certainly can, dear reader, and your request suddenly made me realize that pens have, with a few exceptions, always played a fairly minor role in the unfolding epic/tragicomedy/drawing room farce that is Ink Quest. In one sense, this is perfectly understandable -- I'm much more interested in inks than pens -- but where would the former be without the latter? In an attempt to restore the balance, then, I have taken a photograph of all of my fountain pens in their case. (As I'm working on a borrowed PC with skeletal software, I'm afraid that I haven't been able to correct the colour and sharpen the focus using my customary iMac.) Beginning in the top left-hand corner and working downwards, here are the biographies of the forgotten cast members, the marginalized extras, who have offered a home to all of the inks who have played leading roles in the tales of the Penquod:

Parker 61 Custom: The one that started it all. See my posts of 4, 6, and 7 May for the full story.

Two Parker Duofolds: The noisiest writing instruments that I own: the nibs on both of these pens make squeaking noises when in use. As the university library is usually populated by students having barbecues, drumming, and riding motorbikes, this isn't really a problem. For the story behind the red Duofold, see the entry of 13 October 2006.

Two Parker 45s: The black model was bought for something like £3 in a charity shop in Cowbridge. The other (a Flighter?) came free with the red Duofold mentioned above. I know that 45s have a cult following, but I really can't get on with the model.

Parker Vacumatic: A lovely pen, bought for £10 from Cardiff's legendary Jacob's Antiques Market a few years ago. The filling mechanism works well, but the nib is damaged, and I keep forgetting to find someone to repair it.

Conway Stewart 75: Recently rushed into intensive care when the ink sac disintegrated. Still awaiting transplant. Bought from the open-air Walcot Street flea market in Bath.

Conway Stewart 475: The oldest pen in my collection? Bought from a dealer on eBay a few years ago. Polished and fitted with a new sac by the good people at The Writing Desk. Part of the cap has started to fade, but the nib is soft, flexible, and a joy to use.

Levenger True Writer: Acquired for the Penquod in the Levenger store on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in 2005. While this is a fairly basic pen in mechanical terms, its striking pattern has attracted more comments than any other pen in my collection.

Aurora Hastil: The 'size zero' of the pen world. Worryingly skinny; could do with a few slap-up meals. Achingly modernist. Bought from an eBay dealer a few years ago for something like £30. When I later had problems with the feed, the UK distributor of Aurora products repaired the pen without charge. The woman to whom I spoke on the phone was amazed that I'd even heard of the Hastil. 'We never get asked about that one', she said.

Sailor 1911: Because this has a fine nib (M-F, actually, but Japanese nib grades are renowned for running finer than their Western counterparts), it's almost always used for marking students' essays. Taken to the operating theatre a few years ago when the rubber 'O' ring came apart, fell onto the floor, and was promptly eaten by Kramer, one of my cats. The UK office of the Sailor company was good enough to post me a small packet of replacement 'O' rings without charge. The pen itself was bought from the Petts Wood branch of Webster's, where Sailor had sent it for me to try out during a short stay in London. I took the train from London Bridge out to the suburbs in the middle of a heatwave, and I felt close to collapse by the time I arrived in Petts Wood. The shop was like an oven, and my hand was too slippery to hold the pen properly. I bought it anyway, and I've never looked back. On reflection, I'm pretty sure that the ink shelf in Webster's was piled high with old boxes of Penman ink. (I didn't know what the packaging looked like at the time.) I could have paid for the pen by purchasing all remaining bottles of this rare ink and selling them on eBay.

Pilot Custom 74: A long, long pen. When placed upright in an open space, it picks up Radio Moscow as clear as day. This writes very nicely, but I find the Pilot converter, with its little floatation device, annoying, so the pen doesn't come out of the case very often. For the full story of its acquisition from Belgium, see these two posts from April 2006.

Sailor Sapporo: In use almost every day. Effortlessly reliable. Equipped with a delightful Music nib, which makes flamboyant, operatic scribbling impossible to avoid. (As if I've ever tried to avoid such a thing.)

Visconti Van Gogh Midi: My travelling pen. The clip can be pulled back and clicked against the cap in a most satisfying manner. Good for signalling 'I'm bored' in Morse code during dull conferences.

Stipula I Castoni: Queen of the castle. Blue Beauty. The most elegant (and ridiculously flamboyant) pen in my collection. The 1.1mm italic nib is thrillingly smooth. Has become a bit of a Howard-Hughes-like creature in recent times, however, as I've become a little scared to take it out of the house. I made myself extremely anxious by taking it into work last week: while writing with it in the library was a joy, I was constantly afraid of dropping it or knocking off the little blue jewel on the end of the clip. Perversely, I spent most of the time pushing the jewel to see if it had come loose. It probably has now.

Lamy Safari: If the Stipula is the Queen of the castle, this is the ox in the field. Cheap, simple, stubborn, and allegedly impervious to nuclear attacks. I bought this over a decade ago, when the limited budget of a graduate student ruled out anything higher up the ladder. Always filled with Noodler's bulletproof Lexington Gray and waiting to address envelopes (its only real purpose in life these days). Never fails to start.

Pelikan M200: Like the Sailor Sapporo, this is one that I use almost every day. As any M200 owner will know, these quietly elegant creatures are gloriously reliable. One of the few pens in my collection that Baby Ink likes to grab for.

Sheaffer Admiral: A pleasant little creature with a sharp nib. Rarely used, though, because the Touchdown filling system both baffles and terrifies me. It is said that failure to follow the instructions correctly results in the death of a small, furry animal somewhere in the world.

Cross Townsend: Shiny. Heavier than a wet elephant. Bought when I was first starting to take an interest in fountain pens. Perfectly reliable, but I wish I'd known at the time that £100 can buy something much nicer than a Cross.

Aurora Talentum: Along with the Sapporo and the M200, this always goes to work with me. Equipped with a lovely italic nib. Miraculously survived being dropped (with the cap posted) during an important meeting at another university last year. On reflection, I think that the weight of the cap meant that the nib was facing upwards when the rest of the pen hit the floor.

Thus ends my hymn to the unsung heroes of Ink Quest. Some of these precious creatures rarely step outside the case in which they are stored, but I'm not worried about this. As Walter Benjamin puts it, in his brilliant essay on book collecting:

Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, ‘And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?' 'Not one-tenth of them. I don't suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?'

Inks in use today: Omas Sepia; Noodler's Walnut.
Pens hovering in the background today: Pelikan M200; Parker 61; Sailor Sapporo; Aurora Talentum.

Laying it on the Line

Some people just don’t know when they’re out of line.

In Spellbound, one of Hitchcock’s early Hollywood films, the sight of parallel lines drives Dr Anthony Edwardes, played by Gregory Peck, into strange psychotic states. It could be marks on a tablecloth or tracks left in the snow -– if they’re lines, you can guarantee that the disturbed doctor is going to freak out.

As I write these lines, dear readers, I’m recovering from two Spellbound-like incidents that have scored their way into my week. First, I was delighted to discover yesterday morning that the university library has just received a new copy of a book that I reported as missing some months ago. I made my way to the appropriate shelf, located the crisp volume, and started to make my way to the issue desk. As I was walking down the stairs, I flicked, out of curiosity, to the copyright page in order to find out precisely when the library catalogued the replacement copy; the stamp read 7 April 2008.

Moments later, however, I nearly fell down the stairs when I noticed that someone had, at some point between the first week of April and the present moment, underlined numerous passages in the book and made many marginal annotations. In ballpoint pen.

The mere sight of these lines drove me into a state of furious psychosis, and not just because I urgently need a clean copy of one of the annotated pieces in the volume. I regularly underline in pencil key sentences in books that are my own property, and some of those texts that I use on a regular professional basis have mini-essays added by my hand to the margins. (Someone once remarked, I think, that the annotations made by Louis Althusser in one of his copies of Marx’s early writings are almost as important as the passages to which they refer. Mine are wholly prosaic, but I do think that a book on readers’ annotations needs to be written. It should have wide margins, of course.) But I will go to my grave believing that annotating -– whether in pen or pencil –- library books is a crime for which people should have the book thrown at them, so to speak. While I’m relieved that I don’t live in a place like Texas, where a malfunctioning windscreen wiper seems to be sufficient to earn the offender a trip to death row, I’d happily see the death sentence restored in Britain for anyone found guilty of defacing library property. (Fountain pen users would get a life sentence with the possibility of parole for good behaviour, of course.)

Enraged by the lines of ballpoint ink, I pointed out the crime to one of the librarians. She shared my pain and fury, but sadly informed me that nothing could be done, as the culprit might have perpetrated the felony in the library itself, without ever actually borrowing the book (and thus leaving a vital clue in the computer system). I considered offering to fund the hiring of a graphologist to compare the offending scrawl with samples of handwriting belonging to all 26000 of the university’s students, but the librarian looked rather busy, and I’d already undoubtedly caused great offence by addressing her in English when she’d just been talking to a colleague in Welsh, so I took my scarred book and left.

I doubt very much that anyone who finds it acceptable to scribble on library books in ballpoint pen is a reader of Ink Quest, but I will none the less say this: if you are reading these lines and have, at some point in the last month or so, wilfully defaced a pristine copy of Writing the Image After Roland Barthes, be it known that your monstrous, unforgivable actions lead me to think of the final verse of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ when I picture you dragging your inane plastic writing instrument across the untouched pages.

It’s hard to imagine that yesterday could have gone downhill after this. It did.

When Baby Ink comes home from nursery every evening, he brings with him a little sheet that reports on how his day has unfolded. There are spaces for information about what he has eaten, how his mood has been, which toys he has played with, and so on. (In the latter category, ‘Tea set’ has been ticked every day since he started at the nursery. It’s good to know that he’s inherited my ultra-masculine tendencies -- tendencies, ink fact, that led my colleague Carlos to ask this afternoon, shortly after explaining the meaning of 'Karl' in Old Norse, ‘What exactly would you know about being manly?’)

Yesterday evening, however, the form looked slightly different. In the bottom right-hand corner lurked some strange scribbles. In biro. (They're pictured above.) An explanatory note, penned by one of the assistants, stated that Baby Ink had been helping to complete the paperwork by adding a few lines of his own.

Et tu, Baby Ink?

Will he be treated differently if I now write to the manager of the nursery and ask that he be allowed only to write with a fountain pen and real ink? I remember a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were in junior school with me. Whenever any religious passage was to be read out in assembly, they were given the nod and would place their hands over their ears to block out the words of the infidels. Could Baby Ink be permitted to cover his eyes whenever a biro appears in nursery? Would the assistants understand that ink is my religion and that I’m doing my best to raise my son in the Inkish faith? If he must add his own thoughts to his daily report, could I provide a fountain pen for him to use? There are already photos of some of the children on the wall in the feeding area, upon which phrases like ‘No eggs’ and ‘No strawberries’ are written. Could a picture of Baby Ink with the commandment ‘No ballpoints’ be added?

Without my guidance, without my bringing him into line, who knows what will become of the boy? Left to play with biros, left to scribble in the margins with a ballpoint whenever he wants, he will perhaps grow up to be the kind of person who leaves indelible lines in library books. I must act quickly: his future is on the line.

Ink in use today: Noodler’s Walnut; Noodlers FPN Tulipe Noire; Diamine Royal Blue.

Ink That is Solid Melts into Air

Modern at last.

It's not often that I feel ahead of the times or even vaguely up to the minute. Life, I feel, is best lived with little regard for the latest fashion. I don't want a mobile phone that is also a camera, web browser, MP3 player, and portable cinema; I simply need something that will let me ring or text one of the handful of people in my electronic address book. I don't want to update my computer every year, just to keep up with the latest processor speed, resolution, and memory size; as long as I can use Word and access the internet to update Ink Quest, I'm happy. And, of course, I have no interest whatever in hi-tech disposable gel pens with names like Zaxar; I have my fountain pens and bottled inks, th