Hail Ink

It would seem that I'm not the only one for whom pens and ink are a religion.

It's commonly believed that you should never let anyone else write with your fountain pen. The nib, the story goes, adjusts to your individual way of writing, and the touch of anyone else could ruin everything. I have no idea if this is the gospel truth or merely a myth, but I discovered this afternoon that a friend of mine -- I hope that she won't mind if I call her a 'lapsed Catholic' -- takes such a belief to an evangelical level. For her, I learned, a fountain pen is imbued with the same quality as a rosary, which, I also learned today (my upbringing was wholly secular), is not something that should be shared with another. She reminded me of a meeting at work in which I'd passed her my pen so that she could write something down. This, she reported today, felt as wrong as would reaching over to borrow someone else's rosary during Mass, as the object was uniquely mine. A ballpoint, she added, would have been fine; it was the fountain pen's status as fountain pen, as sacred object, that triggered the feeling of sinful transgression.

Since hearing this confession, I've been thinking about other people using my pens, and I have to say that I'm not particularly bothered by the thought. I wouldn't, of course, entrust one of my precious beauties to a child or someone oafish, but that's purely because I wouldn't want to see brute force being exerted. It's a different matter when it comes to my inks, however. Quite simply, I wouldn't be comfortable about allowing another person to dip his or her pen into one of my bottles. (Is there a way to make that sentence free from innuendo? Probably not.) What if the alien nib were carrying bacteria to which my virginal ink had no immunity? I understand that taking holy communion and kissing the feet of religious statues are, in these risk-obsessed times, activities that are fraught with wiping and cleansing. Would it be acceptable, then, to require a dipper to sterilize his or her pen before taking the plunge? And what happens if double-dipping should occur? (Some of you might remember an episode of Seinfeld in which my hero, George Costanza, launched a typically elaborate plan that saw him travelling across the country to a funeral solely to attempt to pick up a certain woman. He'd already obtained a fake death certificate and pretended to be mourning so that he could obtain 'bereavement discount' with the airline, but the real drama occurred when he was caught 'double-dipping' a snack into a condiment at the wake.) I need to give this some thought. Perhaps I should take a vow of silence and retreat from the world to ponder the complex set of rituals that will need to be in place before I can even contemplate such unholy communion.

While I'm delighted to share my thoughts about ink with you, dear readers, it would appear that I'm not yet ready to share my ink itself. I've never pretended to be a saint, though, have I? I hope and pray this doesn't mean that we can no longer be friends. I'd hate to lose you from my congregation.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Britannia's Blue Waves; Diamine Sepia.

Making Waves

The strangest cargo has just arrived.

You may remember, dear readers, that I wrote some time ago about 'Britannia's Blue Waves', a new ink made by Noodler's exclusively for the UK market. My shipment of this intriguing new colour was waiting for me when I arrived home from work this evening, and I was so lost in the excitement of tearing open the package that I managed to burn my arrabiata sauce. While I was a little 'arrabiata' at my culinary mishap, I was quickly distracted by what I found within the box. I first thought that there'd been some kind of error at the factory and that I'd actually been sent a bottle of one of those additive-laden children's drinks. This ink really looks like nothing that I've ever seen before. I've posted a photograph of the bottle above -- that blue colour is the ink itself, dear readers, and not tinted glass. And the fluid itself doesn't appear to have the consistency of other inks -- it's more like paint or, to conjure up a rather odd image, a powder blue yoghurt.

I've just filled the hold of my Pilot Custom 74 with the curious new acquisition, and I'm pleased to report that it writes very well. And the ink is one of the Noodler's 'bulletproof' colours, which means that, once it's dried, it's immune to water, bleach, ammonia, and just about anything that you could ever throw at it. There's something quite charming, I think, about an ink whose name refers to the sea, but whose composition makes it impervious to the waves. Even more strange, particularly to the eyes of a non-scientist, is the announcement on the label that the ink is '100% water based'. Does this mean that it both repels and is founded entirely upon water? Is my new acquisition always internally divided, forever fighting against itself? (Is this, dear poststructuralist readers, the ink that Jacques Derrida would be using if he were still alive?) Does 'Britannia's Blue Waves' eternally push away the very substance in which its entire existence is anchored? Everyone knows that you can hear the sea when you put your ear to a shell, but will I be able to detect the distant sounds of feuding flotillas, crashing cannonballs, splintering wood, and sinking ships if I hold the bottle to my ear?

Inks in use today: Noodler's Britannia's Blue Waves; Diamine Sepia; Diamine Royal Blue.

The Light Touch

It's over. At about 4pm today, I finished the last paper in the last batch of my marking for the semester. It's been worse than ever this time -- I'm totally exhausted and ready for a lie down in a darkened room.

What made the final stretch particularly difficult was the fact that I was dealing with handwritten examination papers. It would be extremely unprofessional of me to discuss the crimes against spelling that I might have witnessed, so I won't say a word about words that were no longer words. Instead, I will report with great sadness the total absence of a paper written using a fountain pen. (I thought that students liked to assert their newfound freedom, individuality, and quirkiness. Why, then, aren't they turning up to exams with a quill in one hand and a brimming inkhorn in the other?) A few had clearly used a rollerball or some other modern invention that's a notch above a ballpoint, but the vast majority had produced their deathless prose using biros.

For obvious aesthetic reasons, I took great offence, but that's nothing new. What struck me with particular force this afternoon, though, was just how hard some people had been pressing on the paper. One person had exerted such pressure and smeared the biro's ink so heavily that s/he had turned the page into an almost rigid object. And that's the problem with ballpoints, isn't it? They turn even the most delicate soul into a club-wielding Neanderthal. When you're writing with something that's devoid of style and nuance, and that also has an indestructible metal ball on the end, grace goes out of the window. I once read, in fact, that contemporary fountain pens are made with nibs that are much firmer than those produced in the early twentieth century simply because modern hands have become accustomed to writing with biros. If you gave a flexible nib from, say, the 1920s to someone who'd only ever written with a ballpoint, the chances are that s/he would ruin it in seconds. Pen people often call an extremely flexible nib a 'wet noodle', and it seems to me that we've moved from the Epoch of the Wet Noodle to the Time of the Uncooked Penne. (I believe, dear Italian readers, that I've inserted a tasty play on words into that sentence just for you, but I won't make a meal of it. Con piacere.)

The ballpoint, in other words, is undoing the work of evolution, rolling back the wheel of history, leading its users back into the cave. We bearers of fountain pens, however, have seen the light, the light touch. We know that writing can be delicate, that hands should move gently and gracefully across the surface of things. We know that it is not necessary to press hard in order to make an impression.

Inks in use today: Private Reserve Tanzanite; Diamine Dark Brown.

Pretty in (P)ink

It was only a matter of time before the gifts started to arrive.

Yes, dear readers, one of your vast number has sent me a small present, presumably to thank me for filling this blog with such endlessly fascinating thoughts about the burning issues of the day.

The gift is a cartridge of rather pretty pink ink. It's standard international size, so I have several pens into which it would fit. I've been thinking about using to mark the final batch of student essays, which I'll be starting tomorrow morning. I'm not sure, though, if it would be entirely appropriate. I'm all for finishing off the marking marathon with a flamboyant flourish, but is it really a suitable colour for the occasion? Please don't misunderstand me -- I'm not at all worried about the fact that pink is conventionally seen as a feminine colour these days. (This wasn't always the case, inkidentally, as readers of Marjorie Garber's delightful Vested Interests will know.) Masculinity has never appealed to me, and I'm still proud of the fact that I once asked to be excused from a rugby lesson in comprehensive school on the grounds that I might have broken a nail. (I play guitar, you see.) And nothing gave me more pleasure than regularly being called 'a big girl's blouse' by the sports teacher who laughed at my request.

No, my worry is that a student might see that I've written my comments in pink and read them as some kind of love letter, for the shade in question is often seen as the colour of romance. (I'm not sure under what circumstances 'Could do better' or 'Incomplete bibliography' could be seen as attempts at seduction, but it takes all sorts, as they say.) Perhaps, then, I will need to save the pink for another day. Perhaps I should, to be extra safe, use my coldest, most aloof blue ink to mark tomorrow's papers. I hope that the sender of the gift will not think me ungrateful. Trust me, dear generous reader: I'm tickled pink.

Inks in use today: Sailor Brown; Noodler's Nightshade.

Surface Tension

Further proof that the world is conspiring against users of fountain pens has just landed upon my desk, dear readers.

It's Fathers' Day here today -- does the date vary from country to country? -- so I've just written a card for the occasion. (Yes, I realize that most cards refer to "Father's Day", but I'm pedantically sticking, given the involvement of multiple fathers in this event, to "Fathers' Day".) As regular readers of Ink Quest might expect, this apparently simple action quickly descended into furious trauma.

I attempted to write in the card using one of the pens that I'm marking students' essays with today (Pelikan M200 with Diamine Dark Brown; Blue Beauty is sulking), but the extremely glossy surface meant that the ink simply wouldn't take (the three words that I wrote simply wiped off without leaving trace). I was, therefore, forced to use -- shudder -- a biro. The Inkette thought that this was hilarious, of course. 'You're using a biro?', she cackled in a manner reminiscent of Seinfeld's Susan when George asks her if she'll sign a pre-nuptial agreement.

What really annoys me is that there was no warning on the outside of the card, which was sealed in a plastic wrapper, about the glossy surface lurking within. Manufacturers commonly attach a little sticker to tell customers the wording of the text that's printed inside, so why can't they cater for users of fountain pens? Why can't greetings cards come with a little symbol -- a hallmark -- that announces 'Suitable for real ink'? Companies are, as I've discussed before in Ink Quest, absurdly excessive in their labelling of products these days (I bought a packet of vegetarian burgers for the barbecue yesterday, and I was amused to see the phrase 'Suitable for vegetarians' on the box), but lovers of real ink are being short-changed. All I'm asking for is a little picture of a nib and a smiley face on the back of every fountain-pen-friendly piece of stationery. We need to know what's right for us to write upon. Gloss is our loss; sheen is obscene. I'd take an instant shine to any company that made such a move. An obsession with surfaces is not, as users of fountain pens know, remotely superficial.

Ink in use today: Diamine Dark Brown; Herbin Lie de Thé.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

I'm in pain, dear readers.

A ten-hour marking marathon took up most of yesterday's waking hours, and I'm now feeling the effects. I should probably have selected a light-weight pen for the day, but the love affair with Blue Beauty -- the Stipula 'I Castoni' -- is still too intense for us to be apart for more than a few minutes. The problem, though, is that Blue Beauty is pretty big and heavy. (That sentence could also be heard with a comma after 'pretty', inkidentally.) After about three hours, I realized that my hand was aching. After five, a sore spot was beginning to form on the middle finger of my right hand where Blue Beauty had been resting.

I knew all along that switching to a lighter, slighter pen was sensible, but my passion for Blue Beauty over-ruled all rational thoughts (it writes so wonderfully when filled with Noodler's Nightshade!). So, I held my love in my hand for ten hours, dear readers, and that hand is today a shadow of its former self. Photographic evidence is provided above -- if you look very closely, you'll see the damage done to my middle finger. What the photograph cannot show, of course, is the dull muscular ache that I'm experiencing. While this has given me the perfect excuse (as if I really needed one) to sit in the garden today and read the newspaper while the barbecue sizzles, it also means that I'm realizing how damaging this relationship could become. My entire obsession with ink and fountain pens is actually being threatened by the current object of my desire, for Blue Beauty is gradually destroying the very hand that I need to be able to hold a pen and write with ink. (If only I were ambidextrous... Or would that constitute infidelity to Blue Beauty?)

I was planning to use a different pen for tomorrow's marking, but will this cause a tantrum? Will inky teardrops fall from the manipulative nib of Blue Beauty at the very sight of me with another? Is the mark on my finger a sign of fierce possession, like a tattoo or a love-bite?

At Two With Nature

I have returned from my trip to London, dear readers, and my earlier anxieties about pen and ink choices were totally unfounded. It turned out that I had got my facts completely wrong: the campus that I was visiting was not a recently-built glass-and-steel affair at all, but a 1000-acre sylvan retreat with roots stretching back to the fourteenth century. (I know, I know -- could I have been further from the truth?) And the building in which the meeting took place was a beautiful mansion that must date from something like the eighteenth century. The historically-inflected brown ink that I had chosen for the occasion was, in other words, the perfect choice. Quite by accident, I had finally done something that would allow me to be harmoniously at one with nature. (I usually feel, to quote the great Woody Allen, as if I'm at two with nature.)

Except that I hadn't. Even though I told you, dear readers, in the entry that I posted just before leaving, that I had filled two different pens with brown ink, I had a change of heart as I was about to leave the house. Although it meant risking missing my train, I quickly switched the Noodler's Walnut that was in the Stipula pen for Noodler's Nightshade, rushed to the station, and made it to the platform with seconds to spare. All the way to London, I smiled inwardly at my brilliant new scheme (one brown, one aubergine-ish alterntative), my fearless decision totally to rewrite my meticulous plans on the spur of the moment. 'See', I thought, thinking of the Inkette's regular fault-finding missions, 'I can be spontaneous'.

As soon as I saw the campus this morning, I realized that brown ink was the only option. When surrounded by history, I reasoned, you've got to write in a colour that connotes antiquity. Luckily, I thought, I still have the Pelikan M200 up my sleeve, which, you'll recall, dear readers, had been filled with Visconti Brown. The first that I noticed when I sat down at the table for the meeting, however, was that the person sitting opposite me had just placed a rather striking Waterman fountain pen in front of him. I just about managed to refrain from introducing myself with a pen-related comment (while I'm socially inept, I'm not that clueless), but I took the presence of the marbled Waterman as the laying down of a gauntlet. A duel was unavoidable, and the sober, purely functional Pelikan M200 clearly wasn't going to get me anywhere.

I had no choice. Even though I knew that it was filled with an ink that wasn't quite appropriate, I removed the Stipula from its scabbard and placed it solemnly on the table. A document for my signature was passed to me. I raised the pen. Sunlight flashed upon its shining, sharpened nib. I brought it down to the paper and, with an exaggerated flourish, signed my name. I had met the challenge with an unshaking hand, but I became at the very same moment at two with nature, a social misfit who's unable to use the correct ink for the occasion.

The whole experience left me so drained that I abandoned my post-meeting plans to hunt for Omas Sepia -- the Great Brown Whale -- in the pen departments of Selfridges and Harrods. Instead, I went straight to Paddington railway station and caught the first train home.

Ink in use today: the socially deviant Noodler's Nightshade.

War of the Worlds

Ink Quest will be plunged into silence for a couple of days, dear readers, as I have to go and act as External Examiner at one of the London universities. (This basically involves moderating marks, commenting on the overall degree scheme in question, and filling in a few forms to keep the ever-growing army of bureaucrats who run British universities happy.)

The timing of the trip is particularly unfortunate, as I'm still trying to catch up on the marking that I have to do for my own university. As if that weren't enough, a crisis at work emerged this afternoon, and trying to figure out how to deal with it has taken up several hours of my time.

My biggest concern today, however, has been the choice of pens and ink for the trip. This is my first experience as External Examiner, so I'm not quite sure about the most appropriate combinations. If I'm expected to make an intellectual judgement and sign various official documents, I need something confident and authoritative. At the same time, however, I don't want to come across as too confident and authoritative, as there's nothing worse than some self-important pedant turning up to tell the entire department where it's been going wrong all these years.

After hours of deliberation, experimentation, self-examination, and agony, I've settled upon the following: the Stipula 'I Castoni' filled with Noodler's Walnut, and the Pelikan M200 filled with Visconti Brown. I have now packed them away ready for tomorrow, so there's no going back. Taking two pens and two inks leaves my options open, I feel. The Stipula is big and a bit flashy, so I'll keep that one in its case if the members of the department (of whom I only know one) turn out to be a no-nonsense, dressed-down group. (No one rolls up to a rodeo in a Savile Row suit, do they?) If that's the case, the Pelikan -- a plain, functional work-horse of a pen -- can be unveiled without fear of ruining the party. By the same token, if I catch even the slightest glimpse of a cufflink, the Stipula will be swaggering into the room.

I'm now wondering, though, if I've inked myself into a corner by choosing two shades of brown. The campus that I'm visiting opened very recently, so I'm expecting lots of ultra-modern steel and glass buildings. But brown ink, of course, connotes history, the antique world of sepia. Am I about to unleash a war between antiquity and modernity? Will every word that I write clash with its surrounding architecture? Have I, despite my best efforts to be socially acceptable, yet again set myself up for embarrassment? Perhaps I need to re-examine my choices.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray, Noodler's Nightshade.

By Royal Appointment

How do you make an ink that's fit for a princess?

As you know, dear readers, the Inkette has recently started to read Ink Quest, and she's decided that the blog discusses ink too much. 'There should be more about me in it', she decreed last night. When I pointed out that she has absolutely no connection to ink -- or even the slightest interest in the subject, in fact -- she decided that I could instead simply name an ink after her. Risking royal wrath, I replied that I'm not an ink manufacturer, so she has now agreed that I can mix two of my existing inks together to create a new colour that can be Princess Inkette's signature shade.

That was last night. I was planning to start marking students' essays at the crack of dawn today, but my republican breakfast was ruined by Radio 4 playing 'God Save the Queen/King' before the Today programme to mark the birthday of the Duke of Edinburgh. (As he's not actually king, though, I thought that the tune was somewhat inaccurate. Mind you, what could they have played instead? Something from the Duke album by Genesis? It's a tricky one.) I took this as a sign that I needed to give some thought today to Princess Inkette's demands (a princess must have what a princess wants, after all). I have, therefore, been looking through my collection of inks, trying to work out which colours would be suitable for a princess.

Diamine Royal Blue will clearly have to be one of the components, but I'm struggling to find something on my desk that both goes with it and continues the regal theme. It's a real shame that one of the many members of the Diamine brown family in my possession isn't called 'Corgi Brown'. Perhaps Visconti Brown is a contender, but I'm not quite sure how viscount relates to princess in the order of things. Is a viscount even classed as royalty? (One of the problems with detesting all forms of monarchy, I've found, is that you never quite know how that mysterious world works.)

I've just had a thought. I'm going to be in London for a couple of days in the coming week, so perhaps I should just ask for advice at Buckingham Palace. (I can already see the headline: 'Blotted! Ink Nut Detained -- Mall's Well That Ends Well'.) If that doesn't work, perhaps I'll need to buy the new Noodler's UK Eternal colour, Victoria's Royal Mint.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray. (As this wonderful colour arrived in the post yesterday, I thought that I'd make it the official colour for the first batch of marking. There's a pun in there about 'gray-ding' papers, but I wouldn't ever stoop so low.)

Marksism Mark II

A brief postscript to this morning's entry. I tried mixing together Waterman Havana and Noodler's Nightshade to make an ink fit for a revolutionary, but the resulting colour was decidedly dubious. (It also occurred to me that 'Havana Nightshade' is probably already the name of a very sweet rum-based and umbrella-adorned cocktail.) Defeated, I decided on the way into work to visit my local pen shop, where I bought an entirely new ink for the marking marathon. (I chose Diamine Dark Brown, which means, I believe, that I now own the entire Diamine brown family.) Marx would, I'm sure, be horrified at how easily I caved in to consumerism, but, to quote Lenin, what is to be done?

Meanwhile, further proof that Freud was right: I've just driven into work to collect the mountain of student essays that I've been unable to carry home on the train. As I walked up the stairs to my office, however, I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten to bring with me the keys to my filing cabinet, where all of the papers are locked away. I have, therefore, come home empty-handed. The Unconscious gets its own way yet again. Freud 1, Marx 0.

Ink in use today: Diamine Dark Brown.

Marksism

Obsessives often love routines, so I'm sure that you won't be surprised, dear readers, if I announce that one of the things I like about working in education is the way that every year is structurally the same. Incidental details aside, I always know what I will be doing in any given month: September marks the arrival of new students and the return of those continuing with their studies, for instance, while May and June are the dreaded months of marking.

This year has been a little different, however, so my comfortable routine has been totally disrupted. Since March, members of two of the main higher education unions in the UK have, as part of a lengthy industrial dispute, been boycotting the marking of students' work. This hasn't been easy or pleasant, but we've stood our ground in order to defend the profession, even when some people have missed the point. (Someone recently told me, for example, how unfair it was that students were being affected by the dispute; if anyone can tell me how I can take industrial action that will hit the armed forces, I'll be happy to change tactics immediately.) It has also meant that I've spent the period from mid-May until now doing the research and writing that I'd originally planned to undertake in early July.

However, it was suddenly announced on Tuesday evening that the boycott has been called off while union members are balloted on the latest offer put forward by the employers. The marking can now begin, in other words, and so I staggered home on the train yesterday with the first batch. (I'm going to have to take the car into work to pick up the rest this evening, I think.) It feels extremely odd only now to be starting what I would normally have finished by the first week of June. Oh, my beautiful routine -- how ragged you look!

This also means that another delayed ritual can now take place. As I reported in an earlier post, great thought goes into the selection of inks for every new marking season. Back in February, Conway Stewart Brown and Levenger Cocoa were the colours of choice, and I seem to remember picking them fairly easily. This time around, however, I'm struggling to find the appropriate shades. What colours, I've been wondering, would best both commemorate the industrial dispute and signal my ongoing dissatisfaction? (I should perhaps add that the boycott will probably resume in the near future, as the mood at a furious union meeting yesterday suggested that members will vote in huge numbers against the offer that's been put forward.) I need something, in other words, that signifies ongoing solidarity and determination. There is an obvious colour of revolution, of course, and I do have a bottle of Montegrappa Red in my collection. I'm not going to use it, though, as I never mark students' work with red ink -- it's just too predictable, too dogmatic. (Besides, the Montegrappa bottle is such an overly opulent object that the spirit of the barricades would immediately be cancelled out by excessive bourgeois decadence.)

What, if he had been in education, would Marx have used to record his marks? Which colour would he have preferred? The picture above shows a page from the Manifesto of the Communist Party in Marx's own hand. It's hard to tell the true colour on a computer monitor, but it looks to me as if he used an ink that's somewhere between Noodler's Nightshade and Waterman Havana (does this mean that Castro played a part in the naming of the latter, then?). Perhaps that's the solution to my marking dilemma, the way forward for a troubled marksist. Perhaps I need to mix Havana with Nightshade. Ink of all colours, unite!

Anti-Midas

A good friend suggested to me today that I have the opposite of the Midas Touch: everything that I come into contact with, she said, is quickly dragged down into the murky depths of doom.

How right she was. Little did she know that I had, several hours before she made this comment, laid my cursed hands upon my only bottle of Omas Grey. This is one of my favourite inks -- it is, of course, a distant cousin of Omas Sepia, the Great Brown Whale -- but I don't, for some reason, use it very often. Without checking inside the bottle, I filled my Pilot Custom 74 and scribbled a few lines on a piece of scrap paper. What emerged from the nib, however, in no way resembled the unique, subtle colour that I was expecting; it appeared, rather, that I was writing with dirty water.

When I inspected the bottle, I discovered that something rather bizarre has happened to my beloved grey: it's mutated into something monstrous, something that now seems to be two separate liquids. I drained the pen immediately, and I don't think that any damage has been done, but I'm left mourning the passing of one of my favourite inks. And given the impossibility of tracking down any Omas products in the UK, I fear that resurrection is out of the question. Call me heartless, accuse me of moving on to the arms of another while the body of the deceased is still warm in the ground, but I've already settled upon and placed an order for a substitute: Noodler's Lexington Gray. I shall let you know, dear readers, how the new relationship develops.

Though officially in mourning, I'm amused by the fact that I have managed to make even more miserable -- totally to destroy, in fact -- what is commonly seen as the most miserable colour of all. (I've never seen grey in that way, however; to me, it's one of the finest colours of all, and I only wish that more food were grey. Why aren't scientists working on grey fruit as a matter of urgency?) Omas Grey just wasn't grey enough for me, it seems; I had to drag it down a notch or two with my Anti-Midas Touch.

The other major event of the day was Mrs Ink suddenly questioning me about my 'secret life'. It turns out that she'd been reading Ink Quest for the first time. (She's known about its existence all along, I should add, but I haven't exactly rushed to give her the address, as I already know what a weary sigh sounds like.) 'So that's what keeps you at the computer for so long -- writing all that rubbish about nothing', she said. Yes, dear Inkette d'enquête, welcome at last to Ink Quest: my show about nothing.

Inks in use today: Visconti Brown, Waterman Havana.

Radio Days

The sun, having no alternative, is shining. The air is thick with the smell of barbecues. The supermarket has sold out of the ingredients for Insalata Caprese. My cats are lazing in the garden. (Well, apart from the one who's believed to be part Norwegian Forest Cat or Maine Coon; he has very long and thick hair, and his legs are designed for walking through snow, so he's being driven insane by the heat.) Summer, it seems, is finally here. This means that it is time once again for the people of Britain -- particularly the men -- to show just how effortlessly devoid of style they can be. (A friend from Israel once told me with a shudder that he has a mild phobia of the annual unveiling of 'pale, tattooed flab' that marks the beginning of the British summer. The dislike of the tattoos, he assured me, has nothing to do with their prohibition in traditional Jewish law; it's the colour of the ink against the pasty flesh that repulses him.) I have already witnessed several pairs of sandals being worn with brown socks. All in all, it's the perfect day for listening to The Fall's 'British People in Hot Weather', I feel: 'People in shorts drunk before ya / Beached whale in Wapping... '

As it was such a beautiful morning, we decided to go for a stroll along the coast to Lavernock Point and St. Mary's Well Bay. Lavernock has a special place in history, as it was from here that, on May 13 1897, Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first radio signal across water. (He'd moved from Italy to Britain a couple of years earlier, as the Italian government had refused to support his research.) I've posted above a picture that I took this morning of the water across which the historic broadcast was sent. The island on the left, Flat Holm, is where Marconi's signal was received; the other island, in case you're wondering, is called Steep Holm.

And history was in abundance as we walked across the sand and rocks today, for there seemed to be an unusual amount of debris on the shore. I spotted, among other things: a car wheel and tyre, part of a record player, a gas cylinder, half a table, several unmatching shoes, what appeared to be the wheel from a pram, and, best of all, a biro. I'm not making up the last item -- I really did see a yellow Bic pen (minus its refill) wedged between two rocks. I immediately started looking for fountain pens, of course, but I'm afraid that I came home empty-handed. I take this as further proof of the inherent permanence of the fountain pen -- who would think twice about tossing an empty biro overboard, and who would ever think of doing the same thing with a fountain pen?

Whenever we walk along the shore, I can't help looking out for messages in a bottle. Perhaps I just read too many Enid Blyton novels as a child, but I'm convinced that I will one day stumble across a washed-up cry for help or, even better, a map of a secret island where treasure has been buried. Or maybe the message will be sealed in an empty ink bottle. There would be something fitting about that, I feel, as there's a sense in which a full bottle of ink is an inchoate message in a bottle. What might the note say? 'Help -- I'm stranded on a desert island, and I'm down to my last few drops of ink. My Ordnance Survey co-ordinates are '

Anyway, that's my message for the day, and I'm about to press 'Publish post' to cast it off on the waves, hoping that someone will find and read it. While I'm waiting to be rescued, I'm going to sit in the garden with the newspaper and the radio. Grazie, Signore Marconi...

Ink in use today: Noodler's Nightshade.

Counter Fête

I couldn't resist briefly sharing this with you, dear readers. According to the Ink Quest site counter, one of yesterday's visitors was brought to the blog by the following Yahoo query, typed into a computer in Lagos (I'm quoting verbatim): 'if you see an ink describe how you would find out if that same ink is used to make bank notes'.

I love the thought of someone sitting at his or her desk in Nigeria, all set to make -- quite literally -- a fortune with counterfeit currency, but getting held up by my ramblings about rusting ink, death, poststructuralist theory, and haircuts. Perhaps I even managed inadvertently to prevent a major crime. Perhaps I'll be awarded the freedom of the city of Lagos in recognition of my fraud-busting prowess. Hmm, I wonder if they have any decent pen shops...

Rites

Another day, another ink-related dilemma.

I happened to mention in the previous post how different colours have different connotations, and this became painfully apparent to me yesterday when I found myself about to write a 'With Sympathy' card to a neighbour whose mother has just died. I was on the verge of inscribing my message with Waterman Havana ink -- a rich, nuanced, chocolatey colour, as many of you will know, dear readers -- but it suddenly occurred to me that such a shade is perhaps not appropriate when writing words of sympathy. I'm still not quite sure why I hesitated -- maybe it was simply the fact that it's an unusual colour, and mourning usually demands the elimination of all forms of eccentricity. Isn't this one of the reasons that many cultures have a 'uniform' that's set aside for funerals? In my culture, I'd normally be expected to wear a black suit, white shirt, black tie, and black shoes to such an event. Turning up at the graveside in espadrilles, a pastel suit, and a lariat tie just wouldn't be acceptable, unless, of course, the family had specifically requested -- as sometimes happens -- 'no dark clothing'. (Actually, ignore that last part: such an outfit would never be acceptable. Anywhere.)

In the end, having weighed up the many ink options available to me, I used Diamine Royal Blue to write the card, and I chose for the occasion what always strikes me as one of my most solemn pens: the Pilot Custom 74. Somehow, everything just looked and felt right that way -- dignified, solemn, measured -- and I silently congratulated myself for managing to bring my initial, unruly impulses into line with social convention for once.

I've realized, dear readers, that many of the recent Ink Quest posts have had a somewhat bleak, macabre tone. I could try to blame it all on Philip Roth, but that would be unfair (although Patrimony is one of the most depressing things that I've ever read). I'm afraid that I am, quite simply, eternally miserable in outlook. (If you want an example of how I can turn the most simple conversation into a meditation on doom, try this: I was giving a friend a lift home from the cinema a couple of nights ago, and he happened to make a casual comment about one of the tall office blocks in front of us as we waited at traffic lights. Within seconds, I'd managed to turn the conversation around to how anyone working on the upper floors would face certain death if a fire broke out.) So, in an attempt to counter this tide of misery, I thought that I'd list, just for the unbridled fun of it, some of the things that make me uncontrollably happy. I've already listed many such things as 'interests' on the right-hand side of this page, but here, in no particular order, are some more:

waking in the middle of the night to discover that one of my cats has curled up and fallen asleep next to me on the bed; finding, while flicking through the channels, an episode of Seinfeld that I haven't seen for some time; a quick round of Mornington Crescent; the arrival of interesting post; Mrs Ink's Marmite on toast; the moments when Van Morrison's 'Summertime in England' switches from 4/4 to 3/4, and the 'In all your revelation...' crescendo in live versions of 'Cyprus Avenue' from the 1970s; the life-changing quality of breakfast coffee in even the most inauspicious Parisian hotel; the drive from Hay-on-Wye to Capel-y-ffin via Hay Bluff; not having to ask in a café for a glass of water to accompany my espresso; the sound of the Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas, from the balcony on the eleventh floor, and the first glimpse of the Strip from the window of a plane; the way that Bob Dylan bobs around on stage these days; pancakes and maple syrup in an American diner; the return of Shadow in Homeward Bound; walking down the Champs Elysées at night during the Christmas period; the sound of a Vox AC30 that's been turned up loud; the day that any major sporting event comes to an end; lettuce rolls at the Happy Gathering Chinese restaurant in Canton, Cardiff; listening to Fi Glover on the radio; It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve; going out for the newspaper on Sunday morning; the way that John Coltrane comes in on 'Mr Knight'; the rhymes in Gershwin's 'I've Got a Crush on You' and Cole Porter's 'Where is the Life that Late I Led?'; the conversation about the weather between Jack and his son at the beginning of chapter 6 of Don DeLillo's White Noise; a bowl of hot and sour soup that is truly both hot and sour.

Yes, dear readers, all of things make me happy. I am not, after all, entirely miserable. But you'll have to excuse me now -- I must go and wait for Godot.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Walnut; Waterman Havana.