There's a Riot Goin' On

I was on my way to see Cary Grant when I found myself in the middle of a riot.

North by Northwest, my favourite Hitchcock film, was showing at Chapter Arts Centre this evening, so I left home with plenty of time to spare. As I was driving through the Grangetown district of Cardiff, however, the traffic suddenly ground to a halt. Moments later, large crowds of people wearing ugly sportswear began to appear, and I realized that I'd made the terrible mistake of being in the vicinity of the Cardiff City football ground just as a match had finished.

As I had to get all the way over to the other side of the city to pick up two friends -- let's call them Arty and Angelou, shall we, dear readers? -- I decided that emergency action was required, and so I darted off the main road and into the labyrinthine side streets of Grangetown. Not since Cary Grant raised his arm at the precise moment when the name 'George Caplan' was being called has a man made such a mistake. Within seconds, I found myself screeching to a halt in the heart of a battle between a group of about 75 football hooligans and the police riot squad. And the screaming mob, from which various objects were being hurled, was heading straight towards my little Fiesta. To make ominous matters even worse, I was listening to Radio 4 at the time, and the angle of my right hand on the steering wheel meant that the two bangles on my wrist were exposed. As the sunlight bounced off them, it occurred to me that I might just as well have had a sign saying 'Please drag me from my vehicle and club me to death' on the windscreen.

Luckily, before the beasts could trample over my car, the police mounted an almighty assault, which broke up the mob and drove its individual members into side streets, over walls and fences, and into the gardens of unfortunate houses. The traffic was then frantically waved through, and I assume that the battle then carried on. As I was driving off, however, I noticed two policemen who were not part of the front line. One held a video camera, which he was pointing at the fleeing hooligans, and the other was writing in his notebook ... with a ballpoint pen.

Now, I realize that a fountain pen is probably not part of the essential kit that a riot squad officer straps onto his or her belt every day ("Handcuffs -- check; CS gas -- check; Mont Blanc -- check"; "Yes, Sarge, I did write the name of the suspect down, but then I spilled water on the page and it got washed off"). My own father was a policeman, in fact, and I know that he regularly faced the horrors of crowd control at football matches without such a thing. But I can't help wondering if the biro held by the jotting officer was precisely what had driven the mob to riotous behaviour. (As you know, dear readers, the mere sight of a Bic turns me into a raging monster.) Perhaps they were not football hooligans at all, but ordinary members of the public spontaneously turned into inkriminals by the sight of piece of yellow plastic. Perhaps the items that were being hurled towards the police were merely intended to knock the ballpoint out of that one officer's hand. Perhaps those objects were actually gift-wrapped fountain pens and bottles of ink. Perhaps, in other words, the angry crowd was merely engaging in a little community service before being sentenced to do Community Service.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Nightshade.

Admission

A brief entry tonight, dear readers, just to keep you going until I have a moment to write a proper post. I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, but I know that whole social networks will grind to a halt around the world if Ink Quest is not updated on a regular basis.

We're in the middle of enrolment week at the university, and it's more chaotic than ever. The bureaucrats who are employed to organize and publicize the event seem to have forgotten to organize and publicize, so thousands of poor students are wandering around not knowing what to do. 'Did I need to bring my enrolment form today?', one lost soul asked me this morning. 'Yes', I gently replied. 'This is enrolment'.

The horror is made worse, of course, by unavoidable contact with ballpoint pens. Prolonged exposure to these plastic monstrosities has, I fear, irreversibly altered my DNA over the last few days. My knuckles are a little closer to the ground than they were last week, and my thumb is becoming non-opposable. The cloud has a silver lining, though. I retrieved from the storeroom on Monday morning the large box of Bics that comes out once a year for enrolment. But as soon as we tried to start processing a crowd of around 200 students, we discovered that most of the pens had dried up. Yes, dear readers, I was legitimately allowed to throw into the bin a pile of ballpoints that were the official property of the university. They're disposable ... so I disposed of them.

One day, when I run the place, we will enrol using crystal inkwells, quills, and blotting paper. No, let's take it further: students will be required, if they want to study with us, to bring their own bottles of ink to enrolment. We will only admit those who have picked interesting colours. (Forget this sentimental 'Tell me about yourself' nonsense; just show me what you write with.) Perhaps we could even ask each applicant to give a short presentation (no PowerPoint) to an academic panel about his or her selection. This body, the Committee of Inkquiry, would act as gatekeeper, would ensure that higher education goes in the write direction.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Walnut.

Pen-friend

Aristotle only told half of the story.

He apparently once said 'O my friends, there is no friend', but what he should have said, I've realized, is 'O my friends, there is no friend like a friend who announces a love of fountain pens'. I was talking to one of my dearest friends in the world -- let's give her the pseudonym Eileen, shall we, dear readers? -- earlier in the week. She teaches at a university in the middle of England, so I don't see her very often. Our friendship goes back about twelve years, to the year in which we were MA students together. It's a miracle that we passed the course: all I can remember of that period is gossiping for whole afternoons in the Senior Common Room, going to the cinema (and having to tell Eileen that she probably wasn't allowed to dance in the aisle during Muriel's Wedding), and, best of all, driving to Hay-on-Wye singing along to Jack Jones and Sister Sledge at the top of our voices.

Even though I've known Eileen for years, I didn't know until this week that she shares my love of fountain pens. I'm not quite sure how the topic has never come up, but it finally has, and I'm delighted to know now that I have another person to whom I can ramble on for hours about ink. We've already discussed Oxford's Pens Plus and planned Eileen's next purchase (a Pelikan M200), and she's taken a particular liking to Noodler's Nightshade and the shapely bottles made by Visconti. The Inkette seems pleased that my pen talk has a new outlet (I believe that the phrase 'At last, someone to take you off my hands' was used), and I feel as if my friendship with Eileen has moved to a higher level. Is it possible to renew your vows with someone to whom you've never been married, with whom you're just good friends?

Meanwhile, the Ink Quest goes on. The Inkette's older sister has been visiting today, and she wanted to go to Ink Spot, a rather good art supply shop housed in an old church in the Splott district of Cardiff, to buy some materials to make jewellery. I had convinced myself that a shop called Ink Spot would have at least a couple of exciting shades of fountain pen ink, but the selection was, I'm sorry to say, pretty boring: all I could see were a couple of bland bottles of black and blue. Disappointed, I headed back into the city centre (the Inkette and Inkette Senior went home to be artistic with their purchases) and descended upon Pen and Paper, which carries a good selection of Diamine, Conway Stewart, Waterman, Sheaffer, and other inks. As my stock of Diamine Prussian Blue is running rather low, I decided to invest in another bottle. My hand was almost upon the box ... when I saw Diamine Indigo sitting seductively next to it. I suddenly remembered that I'd read a very good review of the latter over at the Fountain Pen Network recently. Feeling dangerously reckless, I cast my original plan aside and took hold of the sultry neighbour. So dizzy was I in the wake of this wild, unpredictable gesture that I ended up picking up a Clairefontaine notepad on the way to the till, just for the thrill of it.

It's been an exhausting afternoon, dear readers. Living on the edge like this takes its toll. I need to slow things down, stop living off adrenaline. O my friends, there is no end to the inkredible adventure that is my life.

Ink in use today: Diamine Indigo (very distinguished in appearance; imagine what Diamine Prussian Blue would look like if it had been sent to an exclusive boarding school from the age of five).

The Year of Inking Dangerously

Happy Birthday to me.

Yes, dear readers, Ink Quest is one year old today. I will be marking this seismic event by gorging myself on a giant cake in the shape of an ink bottle. The candle, of course, will look like a nib. I will also be writing to the Prime Minister and the Queen to propose that 22 September be known as Ink Day from now on. All shops except ink-stocking stationers will be required to close, and children will mark the event by burning effigies of Lazlo Biro. If the Queen and the PM don't like the idea, I will gently remind them that 22 September 1792 was the day on which the French Republic was first proclaimed; if I have to found a Republic of Ink to get what I want, I'm prepared to go the barricades.

The blog has received 3241 visitors in the last year. Some, it's true, have been led here by Google searches for other things: my one entry about Dulux paint, for instance, is still drawing in the occasional DIY enthusiast, and I've lost track of how many Nigerian web users have been brought to Ink Quest by the phrase 'How do I remove permanent ink from a cheque?' But some of you are clearly deliberately reading my ramblings on a regular basis, and I thank you from the bottom of my inkwell for that, dear readers. Here's to another year of burning issues and impartial commentary.

Now, let me eat cake...

Ink in use today: Private Reserve Tanzanite.

Stamp Duty

Devoted readers of Ink Quest (is there any other kind?) will know how much I dislike the ritual of enrolment at the university where I work. This isn't because I hate seeing my students; it's simply because I loathe having to use a ballpoint pen all day. After the last enrolment session, in fact -- as the entry for 11 May will remind you, dear readers -- I came down with a terrible cold, as if I had been poisoned by the plastic beast with which I'd been forced to write for seven hours.

This is on my mind at the moment because the whole of next week is devoted to enrolment. It's the big one, the epic struggle against the teeming crowds and the twisted bureaucracies of the institution. (Don DeLillo wasn't quite right when he said that the future belongs to crowds; it belongs, rather, to crowds bearing triplicate forms.) There will be tears, tantrums, excuses, bribes, panics, misplaced documents, and a steady theft of ballpoints from the desk in front of me. (The latter doesn't bother me, of course; I'm happy to see the vile instruments disappear.)

I think, though, that I've found a way to make the whole process more exciting, more bearable. Private Reserve, the company that makes some wonderful inks, has just launched a range of stamp pads that are filled with these delicious shades. (You can see them here, inkidentally.) As the final stage of a student's enrolment is marked by the moment at which I, with a flamboyant flourish, stamp his or her paperwork with the official 'Enrolled' logo, I think that my department ought to invest in a selection of the new Private Reserve pads. We have the predictable black variety at present, and these smell a little like a hospital ward, so it's clearly time for a change. The trauma of having to write with a ballpoint would be eased a touch, I feel, if I could stamp each student's form in a colour chosen from a range of Private Reserve inks arranged obsessively before me. A quick hit of Shoreline Gold, for instance, might even cancel out the damage done to my immune system by the biro.

And I wouldn't be the only one to benefit, of course. As soon as they saw how pretty their enrolment forms now looked and how much thought I, Stamp Boy, was putting into every stamping, students would cease to worry about the horrors of tuition fees, living expenses, accommodation costs, and the price of books. I'd be doing my job and providing pastoral care. (Does this mean -- gulp -- that I am actually capable of philanthropic engagement with the human race? Where will it all end?) With every stamp, I'd be stamping out anxiety.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Walnut; Herbin Gris Nuage.

Bring Me My Inkhorn

I've set my heart on a new ink-related object.

We've just come back from a pleasant day at the Abergavenny Food Festival, where I was rather excited to find a stall selling nothing but chillies. I'm irresistibly drawn to the more extreme end of the Scoville Scale, so I was particularly thrilled to find a variety that's apparently the hottest in the world. According to this article in The Times newspaper, in fact, the Dorset Naga is almost twice as hot as the previous holder of the world record. I bought two of the little monsters, but, having now read about their power, I'm currently struggling to think of an appropriate use for them. If half of one Dorset Naga makes a curry too hot to eat, and if eating a whole one would probably cause hospitalization, what is to be done?

While we were walking through the town, I saw a man walking into a pub with a metal tankard attached to a special loop on his belt. (How on earth did he get this? Did he walk into a saddlery and simply ask for a belt with a 'tankard loop'? Does such a thing have a special name?) The sight of this dedicated drinker with his tankard strapped closely against his body awakened in me the desire for an inkhorn. As I'm sure you already know, dear readers, these wonderful items were common in earlier times, and were used to hold the sacred liquid. In the picture above, which is taken from the Gospel of Ebbo, you can see Saint Matthew holding his inkhorn in his left hand, but I've also seen pictures of scribes who preferred to strap their inkhorns to their legs. (I couldn't, I'm afraid, find a reproduction of one of those to display here.) Thomas Hobbes even had a walking stick with an inkhorn attached to it, just in case a brilliant idea came to him while he was out strolling.

I think that it would be fitting to start the new academic year (which is just over a week away) with the acquisition of an inkhorn. I could saunter into the first lecture of the semester with it strapped to my leg, and I could dip my pen into it for dramatic effect at key points in the class. We need things like this to add a little glamour to the profession, I feel. I've always been very disappointed about the fact that British universities (with the possible exception of Oxford and Cambridge) no longer require their staff to wear full robes when they're lecturing. At the fictional College-on-the-Hill in Don DeLillo's White Noise, heads of department are, we're told, expected to wear modest robes. 'I like the idea', the protagonist reports. 'I like clearing my arm from the folds of the garment to look at my watch. The simple act of checking the time is transformed by this flourish. Decorative gestures add romance to a life.'

An inkhorn would, I believe, add a similar romance to my working life. It would always be by my side, brimming with the colour of the day. And when it ran dry, I could raise it to my mouth and blow into it to sound The Call of The Ink. A privileged student would then come running to refill the inkhorn in a moment of solemn ceremony ... and the lecture would continue. The role of Inkhorn Monitor would be coveted and fought over, I'm sure. Perhaps there could even be a special scholarship attached to it, leading to generations of Inkhorn Scholars.

Now, where would I look for an inkhorn stockist in the Yellow Pages...

Inks in use today: Noodler's Nightshade; my own green-black mixture.

PS -- 17/9/06. The Dorset Naga chilli really is everything that it's claimed to be. I made a large helping of vegetable curry this evening, and I used just a quarter of one of the little beasts. The whole dish immediately became infused with an incredibly fiery heat. It's not unpleasantly hot, though, and the chilli has a delicate smoky flavour to it. As I sit here typing, thirty minutes after eating, it feels as if my entire being is still glowing, and my face feels a little tingly. I'll be choosing tomorrow's inks before too long -- I wonder if I'll be driven to choose a spicy shade. Perhaps Herbin's Terre de Feu would be appropriate.

ER - Major Trauma

Do I look stupid?

We've just come back from a family lunch, called to mark the return to university of the Inkette's younger sister (as she's training to be a doctor, let's call her the Medinkette, shall we, dear readers?). After the meal, we called into an antiques fair that was being held in the local town hall. I immediately scoured the stalls for fountain pens and ink, of course, and was pleasantly surprised to find a red Parker 17 in a display case. The owner told me that wanted £15 for the pen, which didn't strike me as unreasonable, so I asked if I could have a closer look.

This is when the horrors unfolded. Pulling off the cap, I was greeted by numerous deep scratches (I'd go so far as to call them gaping wounds, in fact) in the section. The ink sac seemed to be in very good condition, but I just couldn't see beyond the gouges. (What had the previous owner been doing? Whittling?) When I handed the pen back, the owner of the stall told me that he had another fountain pen for sale. He then presented me with a sight that has left me with deep mental scars: a black Parker 51 with the cap from a biro wedged onto it. 'I don't think it's the right lid', he said. 'No', I replied, trying to keep my lunch in my stomach, 'it certainly isn't'. 'I'll let you have it for £10', he then offered, in a tone that managed effortlessly to mix generosity with naked fraudulence.

I removed the vile cap, thinking that it might be worth haggling him down to £5 for the body of the pen and then trying to track down a proper cap from a reliable source. But I then noticed that the plastic around the nib had been melted, as if the previous owner had lit it instead of a cigarette. (Who are these savages?) 51s don't show much of their hooded nibs at the best of times, but this poor, abused specimen had barely half a millimetre on display. 'It's all melted', I pointed out in horror. 'Oh, you could clean that up okay', came the reply. It was at this point that I decided to walk away and find the Inkette and the Medinkette.

Had I stumbled into some kind of Emergency Room for fountain pens? Should I have called the Medinkette over and asked for her expert advice on how to patch up writing instruments that have been gruesomely wounded in the line of duty? Was the owner of the stall some kind of modern-day body snatcher who steals deceased pens from morgues and then tries to sell them on? Whatever happened to the Hippocratink oath? Oh, the trauma...

Ink in use today: Noodler's Walnut.

Inkymysgedd

The quest for the perfect grey goes on.

I have four different greys in my collection (Noodler's Lexington, Herbin Gris Nuage, Abraxas Anthrazit, and Diamine Grey), but I'm not entirely happy with any of them. The Abraxas still has novelty on its side, as it's only been in my possession for about a week, but I'm gradually realizing that it's a little too dark for my liking. Gris Nuage, on the other hand, is just a bit too pale, and I've also discovered that it doesn't photocopy very well.

I can't possibly justify buying another grey, and there's no hope of finding in the UK a bottle of Omas Grey -- the perfect shade -- to replace the one that went mouldy some months ago, so it's clear that more mixing is called for. I think that I'll start with the Gris Nuage and progressively add one of the darker varieties until I arrive at a satisfactory hybrid.

Inkidentally, I've finally figured out why I'm so happy to mix inks, the very material of words. As I was walking into town yesterday morning, I found myself standing alongside two women at the pedestrian crossing. Their conversation -- which I couldn't help overhearing -- was mostly in Welsh, but would occasionally slip into English for a few moments. At one point, for instance, I heard the following: 'Yna -- yn yr adail on the right-hand side' ('There -- in the building on the right-hand side).

It's quite common to hear this kind of slippage when Welsh is spoken in the part of Wales in which I live and grew up. And even when nothing but English is being used, the structure of Welsh often leaves its mark upon how English is spoken in this part of the world. (Some years ago, John Edwards wrote two much-loved books, Talk Tidy and More Talk Tidy, about the joys of 'Wenglish', and he's now launched a fascinating online dictionary of the language.)

It's not surprising, then, that a lifetime of being surrounded by the mixture (Welsh: cymysgedd) of languages has led to an obsession with mixing the raw materials of writing. Hybrid sentences sound perfectly natural to me, and the combined colours that might make them up when they're written down are just part of the mix. Mixed ink is not a mixed blessing. No ink is inkonsonant.

Inks in use today: Private Reserve Chocolat; Conway Stewart Blue.

In Search of Lost Ink

For a long time, I went to bed early to read Proust.

Yes, dear readers, the use of the past tense in the previous sentence alerts you to the fact that I have finally finished Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time -- all 3254 pages of the six-volume beast. It's taken quite a while. I read the first instalment in 1998, just as my days as a student were coming to an end. I loved it, and I vowed to race through the other five volumes immediately, but life (work, to be more precise) ended up getting in the way. Then, last summer, I decided that I needed to get back to Marcel. The only problem was that I couldn't quite remember what had happened in volume one. I tried bringing the details back by dipping a piece of cake in tea, but this just made a mess in the cup, so I had to start from the very beginning again.

It's been the year of Proust, in other words. I've read various other things for pleasure, and numerous things for work, along the way, but the seasons' turning has been matched by the turning of pages of Proust. Finally, two days ago, I found myself closing the sixth tome in a state of relief, joy, exhaustion, and melancholy.

I've been thinking ever since about the kind of ink that Marcel used to write the Search. It's hard to tell from pictures of the manuscripts, unfortunately. And how many bottles must have gone into his epic? He seems to have been somewhat obsessive about the ritual of writing, in fact. André Maurois tells us, for instance, that when he moved to 102 Boulevard Haussmann in 1906, Proust 'insisted that his bed and the little table which he called his "pinnace", loaded with books, papers, fountain pens, and the materials needed for his fumigations, close beside it, should be placed in exactly the same position as they had occupied' in his two previous residences. There's no mention of ink in Maurois account, but I'm willing to bet that petit Marcel was fussy and that he used something pretty free-flowing. Roland Barthes once remarked, in La Préparation du roman, that Proust wrote 'at a gallop', after all. (Well, there's no point in trotting idly around your cork-lined room if you've got In Search of Lost Time to produce, is there?)

I think that there's a gap in the market here. De Atramentis already makes 'Franz Kafka' and 'Miguel de Cervantes' inks, so why can't we have bottles of 'Marcel Proust'? They'd be madeleine-scented, of course, and the stopper would be sealed with wax that could later be used on a moustache. And just in case the user of 'Marcel Proust' wanted to write his or her own In Search of Lost Time, the ink would only be sold by the barrel.

Ink in use today: Private Reserve Chocolat.