Boxing Day

26 December is known as Boxing Day in the UK (and, I believe, in many of Britain's former colonies). Its name, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with people wearing gloves, standing in a ring, and beating the living daylights out of each other. (Although, if you've ever been to a Welsh family Christmas, you'll probably be used to precisely this kind of thing. 'Two Welsh people, ten opinions', as the saying goes.) The roots of Boxing Day, rather, according to one theory, stretch back to a time when it was common for servants to work on Christmas Day. These poor souls were allowed to rest on the following day, when their employers often gave them boxes of gifts to thank them for their services during the year.

I, however, will be celebrating Boxing Day on 27 December from now on, and here's why. In a rare moment of orderliness, I have this afternoon gathered together all of my inks (well, most of them) and placed them into a large cardboard box. Because I know that you won't sleep tonight unless you've seen the box, dear readers, I have thoughtfully provided a photograph of it above. You can also see Black Beauty to the right of the container. One or two small bottles are in the Cuban cigar box at the top of the frame, but most of them have gone into 'The Inkrate'. My desk now looks much neater -- until today, the bottles sprawled across the surface like an ever-expanding suburb. This afternoon's radical reorganization also makes saving all of my precious shades much easier should I ever have to evacuate Ink Towers at short notice. (I will, of course, make sure that the Inkette and the cats are out of danger before I grab The Inkrate and run for my life.)

But gathering all of my inks together and storing them in a single container has brought with it a new anxiety: they're all now in one place. If the box goes, they all go. I'm used to making endless backups of precious files held on my home computer and then storing them in different places. Completely different places, in fact, for I have duplicates of everything valuable on CD-ROM in my office at the university and on my computer there. Having my digital archive in just one place is unthinkable.

How, though, do you make backup copies of bottles of ink? Should I start buying two of everything and storing the second sample in a deposit box of a bank in Switzerland? Or should I just decant half of each new bottle into a bomb-proof vial and send the latter away to a secret bunker deep beneath the Nevada desert? (Maybe Area 51 is actually named after the Parker 51 fountain pen.) I will need to give this some thought, to think outside the box for a while.

Inks in use today: Omas Sepia; Noodler's Nightshade.

Crackers

I present you, dear readers, with Exhibit A in the case against Christmas.

The Inkette and I spent an extremely pleasant afternoon yesterday with her family at a country house called Llansantffraed Court, where we were served an excellent Christmas lunch. As a vegetarian, I have been offered some monstrous festive feasts over the years, but I'm pleased to say that the chef at Llansantffraed cooked up some delights for me, including a delicious salad of wild mushrooms and chèvre.

Although I proudly celebrate Festivus instead of Christmas, I am aware that the latter involves the pulling of crackers at the dinner table. (Is this something unique to Britain, or do other cultures also partake?) I am not at all fond of the activity -- I dislike the loud noises, and the paper hats never fit my medicine ball of a head -- but I selflessly took part yesterday afternoon. Imagine my horror, then, dear readers, when three of the crackers allocated to our table contained ballpoint pens as 'gifts'. To make matters worse, they had been designed to resemble Mont Blanc fountain pens, as you can see from the photograph posted above. I could barely keep my food down.

As regular readers of Ink Quest will know, I am convinced that the entire universe is conspiring against me; I take the emergence of these three ballpoints as further proof of this. Had the staff of the hotel been briefed by the Bic company to place two ballpoint-filled crackers in my vicinity? Was this end-of-year 'gift' from the makers of ballpoints designed to remind me that they're watching my every move, that the war against proper ink and fountain pens knows no holiday? But how did they know that I was coming? The booking was in the Inkette's family's name, not mine, so my presence at the table was something known only to the inner circle of Ink Quest. Is there a double agent in our midst? I shall have to investigate.

The history of crackers, inkindentally, goes back to 1847, when they were invented by a man called Tom Smith. I can't help noticing that Europe was seized by revolutionary fervour just one year later. This is what happens when you give people ballpoint pens as 'gifts'. If you push them too far, they crack.

Luckily, the shocking appearance of the ballpoints at the dinner table was negated by my main Christmas present from the Inkette: a black Aurora Talentum fountain pen with a delicious italic nib. It has already been named Black Beauty, and it is currently sitting on my desk alongside Blue Beauty (my Stipula 'I Castoni'). They make a fine, stylish pair (they're both Italian, after all). I spent quite some time yesterday thinking about which ink I would use for Black Beauty's very first filling. In the end, I settled upon the classic Omas Sepia, but that was only after I'd given considerable thought to a brand of ink that is not currently in my possession. One of the readers of Ink Quest -- let's give him the pseudonym Stefan, shall we? -- emailed me from New York a few days ago to say that he'd spotted a reference to Bril inks. They're made in India by the wonderfully named Industrial Research Corporation, and you can see from their webpage that they come in packaging that recalls earlier, fountain-pen-friendly times. They're also available, as Stefan gleefully pointed out, in one-litre bottles. I don't yet know if Bril inks can be bought in the UK, but I've sent someone up to the crow's-nest of the Penquod to keep a lookout. If necessary, we will set sail for India, our paper party hats rustling in the wind. Call me crackers if you want.

Ink in use today: Omas Sepia.

Happy Festivus!

Ink Quest is far too mired in secular misanthropy to offer its readers Christmas wishes, but it is pleased to mark the event of Festivus.

Fans of Seinfeld will know that 23 December was the day chosen by Frank Costanza to celebrate Festivus, the alternative holiday 'for the rest of us'. In place of a traditional Christmas tree, a bare metal pole is erected. Decorations are to be avoided: 'I find tinsel distracting', reports Frank at one point. The Festivus dinner is accompanied by the 'Airing of Grievances', in which the guests at the table are given the chance to tell the others present exactly how they have disappointed them in the last twelve months. Then, after the meal, the 'Feats of Strength' begin. Festivus comes to an end only when the head of the household has been pinned to the floor by one of the other members of the family.

I'm delighted to be able to report on this special day that Festivus is gradually catching on. It is now possible to buy Festivus poles from a company based in Milwaukee. Interested Ink Quest readers should click here for more information. (I am, though, extremely disappointed to read that the factory is closed on 25 and 26 December, but not on Festivus itself.) If I'd found out about the existence of the firm earlier, I'd have placed an order. Oh well, I have 365 days to convince the Inkette that we need a Festivus pole instead of a tree in 2007.

I also have twelve months to launch a Festivus-related project. In the episode of Seinfeld that saw Festivus born unto the world, George Costanza, fed up with having to buy gifts for his colleagues, invented a fake charity called The Human Fund. Its slogan was 'Money for People'. George then strolled merrily around his office, giving out cards informing his co-workers that a donation had been made in their name to The Human Fund. Things only went awry when George's boss, Mr Kruger, handed him a festive cheque for $20,000 from the firm to the charity.

By this time next year, then, dear readers, Ink Towers will be decorated with a bare metal pole from Milwaukee. What's more, donations will have been made in all of your names to The Human Fund. In the meantime, I'll simply say 'Happy Festivus'! Let the 'Airing of Grievances' and 'Feats of Strength' begin...

Ink in use today: Omas Sepia.

P.S. (4.40pm): I've just remembered that BBC Radio 2 is marking the special day by broadcasting the first instalment of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour this evening. This could be the best Festivus ever!

I Love Paris (and Finchley)

'I love Paris every moment / Every moment of the year', runs the old Cole Porter song, and I have to agree. It's my favourite city when it sizzles and drizzles, and the Inkette and I are flying there for a short break before too long. I have already planned the trip around visits to pen shops; if there's time to spare, we can take in the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but priorities are priorities.

But, chers lecteurs, I'm now wondering if we need to leave the country to have a thrilling holiday, for I have just discovered the existence of The Stephens Collection in Finchley, North London. It's housed in the former home of Henry 'Inky' Stephens, the son of Henry Charles Stephens (the inventor of the 'Blue-Black Writing Fluid'). When 'Inky' Stephens bought Avenue House on East End Road in 1874, he had a laboratory constructed, in which he developed the work of the Stephens Ink Company by experimenting with writing fluids. Present-day visitors to the house can, according to the website, learn all about the company and even indulge in '"hands-on" writing with steel pens, ink and blotting paper. Also with quill pens!' In other words, it's an interactive museum devoted to ink.

How have I not heard about this establishment until now? (A post on the Fountain Pen Network alerted me to its existence yesterday.) I clearly never need to leave Britain again. It has an ink museum! A museum of ink! Should I cancel the flights to Paris and the hotel booking, and funnel the money into a trip for two to North London? I'm sure that the Inkette wouldn't mind giving up a trip to the City of Romance for a week in Finchley. (Perhaps there are even rooms for rent at Avenue House.) If I do change our plans, though, I will probably have to delay announcing the ink holiday to the Inkette, for I am currently in her bad books. The Aurora Talentum fountain pen that I am having for Christmas arrived by Special Delivery this morning, and I had been left strict instructions not to open the package. This was, of course, a little like leaving an open tin of pilchards in front of a hungry cat and asking it not to eat any of them. I just had to peep... Oui, oui, je suis 'inkriminé'.

Ink in use today: Omas Sepia.

The Inkterpretation of Dreams

I dream of ink.

Literally, dear readers, literally. I dreamed last night that I was being interviewed about the importance of ink for The World at One, BBC Radio 4's news programme. Edward Stourton was conducting the interview, but he introduced himself as Eddie Mair and spoke in Mair's voice. (Note to non-British readers: both figures are Radio 4 presenters, but they look nothing like each other, as you can see from the two pictures posted above. They also sound totally different: Stourton has a cut-glass English accent, while Mair's is Scottish.) He sat opposite me in the studio, a black Pelikan M800 fountain pen in one hand, a bottle of Mont Blanc blue ink in the other. He kept dipping the pen into the ink, scribbling on a piece of paper on the desk, and saying 'I don't see what all the fuss is about'. I then pulled out my Pelikan M200 and started drawing patterns in an unidentifiable brown ink, at which point Stourton started to flick his blue ink at me and mock the relative cheapness of my pen. It was then that I woke up.

I've read Freud, so I know that dreams are not meaningless. Dreams fulfil wishes, in fact; they are where unconscious desires find themselves played out, often in mysteriously coded forms. But I've spent all day trying to work out which of my darkest desires were being staged in my dream, and I can't get anywhere. I would absolutely hate to be interviewed in any context, and I have no interest whatever in meeting either Mair or Stourton, even though I think that they're both brilliant broadcasters. I've tried a bit of 'free association', thinking that the dream might be subtly encoded, but that's led me nowhere. 'Mair', when pronounced differently (more like a rhyme for 'fire'), I soon found myself thinking, is a Welsh woman's name. Was the dream the fulfillment of a desire to elope with a woman called Mair who would flick ink at me in some bizarre erotic ritual? ('Kinky' has 'ink' in the middle of it, after all.) Absolutely not, for I know of no Mair to whom I am madly attracted. And the names 'Edward', 'Eddie', and 'Stourton' lead nowhere beyond themselves in my mind.

The only glimmer of hope lies in the unidentifiable brown ink with which I was doodling in my dream. Could this be the key? It did occur to me yesterday morning (before my dream, in other words) that there is currently no particular ink after which I am lusting. I really do have everything that I want at the moment, and countless hours browsing the internet for a new object of desire have come to nothing. A couple of things look vaguely interesting, but I am currently at a moment when the Ink Quest is actively looking for new whales to pursue. The Penquod is still sailing, of course, but it has nothing specific in its sights. These are days of idle dreaming, you might say. And you might also say that my dream was connected to my desire to have something to desire. While I was sleeping, that is to say, I fulfilled my wish to have something for which to wish. The only problem is that I now yearn for an ink that is purely a pigment of my imagination. The Penquod must now chase something that does not exist. As such, it can never be caught, which means that the Ink Quest is guaranteed to go on forever. Aha(b)! I've finally inkterpreted my dream.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Nightshade.

Ink is Ink

Victory so soon?

Yesterday's post reported how an airport-style security device had been installed at Inktown Central railway station. Eager to find out more about the operation, which I believed to be an attempt to persecute users of fountain pens, I walked to the station once again this evening, ready to stand up and be counted. (I normally join the train further up the line.)

But the device had disappeared without a trace, and there were no police officers to be seen. I'm sure, too, that the regular station employees would, if asked, have claimed no knowledge of yesterday's events. (Let's just say that there was a hint of 'plausible deniability' in the air, shall we?) Does this mean that Ink Quest has single-handedly brought about a revolution, a victory for freedom? Did They (capital 'T') take one look at the puns in last night's posting and beat a hasty retreat? Or have they dismantled the device as part of a more subtle war against owners of fountain pens? ('No, of course we're not watching your every move. Just go about your business as normal. You're free, you fool!')

Perhaps I'm right to be paranoid. About fifteen minutes after I posted yesterday's entry, Ink Quest was visited by someone at the Office of the Attorney General in New York. I'm not making this up. Now, it's perfectly possible that this was mere coincidence. Why shouldn't there be a lover of ink working in such a place? If that's all there is to it, then I salute you, employee of the Office of the Attorney General, and thank you for stopping by.

I have, though, seen Three Days of the Condor, so I know that there are government agencies which do nothing but read everyday novels and other publications in order to search for coded messages being sent by shadowy organizations. Perhaps my reference to an 'airport-style security device' caused a red light to flash on a gleaming console somewhere in a covert bunker in New York State. Perhaps they're really after me now. If this is the case, let me make it simple for you, Mr X. (yes, I've seen JFK as well, so all of your tricks are known to me.) This blog really is about ink. It's not a code for something sinister; I am genuinely obsessed with ink, not with world domination, and all 112 posts to date have actually been about fountain pens and the sacred fluid that goes inside them. Move along -- there are no secrets here.

Oh wait, there's someone knocking at my front door...

Inks in use today: Caran d'Ache Grand Canyon; Noodler's Nightshade.

Inkquisition

They're out to get me.

Something rather strange is happening at Inktown Central railway station. As I passed through the ticket barriers this evening, I noticed a large group of policemen and policewomen standing around an airport-style security device rather like the one pictured above. They seemed to be selecting commuters at random and painstakingly screening them. One man descending from the platform tried to run away when he saw the police, but he was soon caught pinned against the wall. It turned out that he was travelling without a ticket. (I'm not making this up. Anything can happen at Inktown Central when the sun has set.)

I wasn't selected for screening, but I've been wondering precisely what they're checking for ever since. And how are they selecting their victims? Did I look innocent? Am I so inconsequential that they didn't even notice me? Did they take one look at the elegant, impeccably attired gentleman strolling in a dapper and dainty fashion through the barriers and think 'He couldn't possibly be trouble?' Or did they let me go free so that I can be tailed going about my ordinary business, all the while believing that I have escaped their surveillance? (10:15pm -- Subject is sorting through a stack of bottles on his desk. 10:30pm -- Subject, having narrowly avoided spilling a bottle of unidentified fluid on the floor of his study, is now washing a curious dye from his fingers in the bathroom. Call in Forensic. 10:45pm -- Subject's wife is heard to call 'Have you finished messing about with those ******* pens yet?' from bedroom.)

I have an uneasy feeling about the whole affair. I've often noticed that the newsagent in the main foyer of the station sells ballpoint pens, so I suspect that the metal detector is secretly sponsored by Bic. They're quietly weeding out the carriers of fountain pens, with their tell-tale metal components, and they're going to confiscate our precious objects. We will then be herded outside to the newsagent and forced to buy plastic ballpoint pens. It will be a daily ritual of humiliation, of attempted conversion. (I have about twenty fountain pens, so I can survive only for four working weeks.) We will be forced to carry our newly acquired biros in our hands at all times for maximum degradation. We're being persecuted. This is how it starts. Send help from the free world. The Inkquisition has returned.

Ink (defiantly) in use today: Noodler's Nightshade.

Dependence

Why do people pay good money to get into the cinema, but then talk all the way through the film?

This thought was running through my head as the Inkette and I found our viewing of a film rudely interrupted by two teenage girls this afternoon. (Brought up on ballpoints, no doubt.) But they clearly had no idea who they were messing with, for the Inkette promptly stormed out of the theatre and insisted that the cinema staff intervene, which they did. We watched the rest of the film in silence.

The outing also featured a pen-related incident, which is why I'm telling you about the Inkette going on the rampage, dear readers. When I handed over my card to pay for the tickets, the assistant handed me a pen so that I could sign the slip. (I thought that everywhere in the UK had moved over to the chip-and-PIN system by now, but fashions do often take a little while to reach Wales.) As he handed me the instrument (an ugly ballpoint, of course), he said 'Here's a pendulum'. I thought that I'd misheard, so I asked what he'd said. 'Here's a pendulum', he repeated.

Our conversation went no further (you don't actually expect me to relate an incident in which I've spoken to people at length, do you?), but his comment stayed with me. So much so, in fact, that I found myself thinking about it all through the screening of the film (apart from at the moment when the Inkette called in Bravo Two Zero unit for back-up, of course). To be specific, I was trying to work out if 'pen' and 'pendulum' were etymologically linked. Call it odd, call it pathetic, but this is how my mind works, dear readers, and I curse British cinemas for not providing a dictionary and a torch with every ticket. I knew that 'pendulum' has its roots in the Latin 'pendere' (I wish I could figure out how to do the accent on the second 'e'), which means 'to hang'. (Something that's independent, then, doesn't 'hang on' anything else.) But, to my horror, I suddenly realized that I had no idea about the etymology of 'pen'. I found myself trapped in all sorts of mental dead-ends, particularly when I foolishly tried to make an impossible leap from the English 'pen' to the Welsh 'pen', which means 'head', 'end', 'top', and 'chief'.

I have whipped myself forty times with a ballpoint to atone for this blasphemous gap in my knowledge, dear readers, and I have since looked up the root of the word in my dictionary. It comes, I now know, from 'penna', the Latin for 'feather'. I have considered -- à  la Costanza and his 'The jerk store called, and they're running out of you' comeback -- returning to the cinema this evening to tell the assistant that his joke was fatally founded upon false etymology, but I have a feeling that he wouldn't be hanging on my every word. You, on the other hand, dear readers...

Meanwhile, a major pendulum is swinging in my life. Accustomed to my fussy obsessions, the Inkette has informed me that I have to make a decision about what I would like for Christmas within the next couple of days. And, as usual, I can't decide. I've narrowed the field down to two pens, I think, but I keep swinging between them. One day I'll have decided upon a white/tortoiseshell Pelikan M400 with an OBB nib, but the next day will see a black Aurora Talentum with an italic nib in favour. I can't have both, so I have to choose. But I can't, and the clock is ticking. Matters are pending.

Y Pen

Ink in use today: Rohrer and Klingner Alt Bordeaux; Rohrer and Klingner Sepia.

A Vindication of the Rights of Inks

I'm beginning to think that you really can have too much of a good thing.

I've just spent about twenty minutes trying to choose an ink for tomorrow. I knew that I wanted a brown, but I now have close to fifteen browns in my collection. They're all different, and yet they're all brown. And that's the root of my problem, I think. I only need to fill one pen (the other is already loaded with Lexington Gray), but the 'one' colour I desperately want isn't actually one colour at all. Diamine Sepia looks nothing like Noodler's Walnut, for instance, and Noodler's Walnut is totally different from Sailor Brown, and yet they're all brown, all classed as the same general colour. (What matters, of course, is that brown, however diverse, is somehow distinguished from blue, black, grey, and so on. Merci, Monsieur Saussure.)

In the end, bogged down in brown, I solved the problem by choosing something totally different, something decidedly un-brown: Rohrer and Klingner Alt Bordeaux. But I'm now wondering if the world of ink needs a different system of classification. Maybe thinking in terms of families of colour is the wrong way to do things. Maybe we should give each ink a unique name that is in no way related to its shade. And no two inks could share a name. A variation on this latter point also occurred to me, inkidentally, when I was, earlier in the week, rereading Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. (This is the play that contains one of Beckett's greatest jokes: Winnie, referring to an old song, says 'What is that unforgettable line?'.) Did the makers of the popular television series of the same name know about Beckett's text when they titled their show? Couldn't they have come up with something else? Why didn't Samuel sue? (What, more importantly, would have happened if Beckett had written an episode of 'the other' Happy Days? Would Richie and Joanie have sat around for an hour 'waiting for Fonzie'?)

Perhaps my new system of naming inks would eventually bring about a widespread 'colour blindness'. People would stop thinking in terms of blue or brown, and start referring to each bottle as a distinct entity. The inks formerly known as, say, Waterman Havana and Levenger Cocoa would, in my brave new world, no longer be seen as similar, no longer be lumped together 'under the scrutiny of an in-different science' (merci, Monsieur Barthes) that named them both brown. They would, rather, be known as 'Michael Smith' and 'Jennifer Dean'.

In effect, I suppose, I'm calling for rights for inks. For too long we have oppressed them, seen hugely diverse groups as identical. The time has come to change the very way in which we see them. People will laugh at my proposal, I'm sure, but let them remember that people laughed when Mary Wollstonecraft demanded rights for women in the late eighteenth century, and then again when Peter Singer published Animal Liberation in the 1970s. Let us give individual names to our inks, precisely because we want to treat them as individuals, as we expect to be treated. Let us cull colour.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Brown.

Writing and Difference

I think that I've finally found an appropriate use for ballpoint pens.

In Paper Machine, Jacques Derrida reports that, while his later works were written straight onto a computer, the early texts were meticulously crafted with pen and paper before being typed up. For the particularly important offerings, he continues, a special quill-like dip pen was used.

For the young Derrida, in other words, the dip pen and proper ink lent a sense of gravitas to proceedings. As I insist on using a fountain pen for just about every written mark that I make, however, and as I cling to the dying practice of writing out every article and book chapter in longhand before going anywhere near my computer, the very instruments that struck Derrida as special are actually profoundly ordinary to me. I still adore my pens and my bottles, of course, but they're everyday items in Ink Towers. I use my favourite italic nib to write both shopping lists and conference papers; I don't differentiate.

Since I read Derrida's confession earlier in the week, though, I've been wondering if I might develop an inverted, spiteful version of his practice of turning to special pens for special moments. As you know, dear readers, I hold the ballpoint pen in total contempt and see it as the hideous sign of everything that is wrong with the world. ('Hateful modernity', as H.P. Lovecraft once put it.) Perhaps, in the light of Derrida's words, I should start using a ballpoint whenever I hold the document that I am writing, or the person to whom I am sending the message, in similar contempt.

Let me give you an example. My failure to update Ink Quest since last Sunday can be explained in part by the fact that I have spent much of the week working on an exceptionally tedious document for the university, in which I am required -- using one of those monstrous Word templates that uses text boxes with a will of their own -- to answer a series of generic and vacuous questions about the activities of the degree scheme in the 2005-6 academic year. Don't get me wrong: I'm perfectly happy to take stock of our successes and failures, but I resent being made to do this in a format that has been cooked up by a bureaucrat who has clearly never been near an academic department in his or her meaningless life. As the heroic Onora O'Neill said in her 2002 Reith Lectures on 'A Question of Trust', if you want higher education to be accountable, at least let us give an account.

Anyway (and cutting short what could develop into an epic rant about everything that's wrong with British universities), here's what I've been thinking: wouldn't it be appropriate to signal my total contempt for this gruesome document, which I have to hand in next week, by signing it with a ballpoint? Wouldn't using a fountain pen and an elegant ink be to drag these sacred items down to the level of bland idiocy? I'm sure that no one would even notice my gesture, but I would know that I'd signed and signed off in the most contemptuous way possible. (Note to whoever organizes my funeral: if you really want me to turn in my grave, just leave a ballpoint pen by the condolences book. But know this: I will haunt you forever, and if you think that I'm a miserable misanthrope in life, just wait until you see me in death.)

Changing the subject, the Ink Quest took us to Bath today. As I think I've reported in the past, the Inkette and I lived in the city between 1995 and 2003, so it's a place that we know extremely well. Well, almost. It is with great sadness that I note the passing of the city's finest pen and ink shop, Papyrus. It was there that, on a whim in 2001 or 2002, I bought my very first bottle of unconventional ink -- a delicate little vial of hand-made Italian sepia that came without a label but crowned with a wax-sealed cork. Until that point in my life, I had no idea that ink for fountain pens came in shades other than blue and black. And it was there that I first saw and fell in love with mysterious, exotic pens that I now know to have been Omas, Pelikan, Visconti, and vintage Parker. But Papyrus is no more -- a home furnishing shop now stands in its place -- and I have come home from Bath without a new bottle of ink. (I did try around the corner in Wood's, but the sales assistant didn't seem to understand my incredulity when she announced that they don't stock every one of the J. Herbin colours.) RIP, dear Papyrus -- you made a difference to writing.

Ink in use today: Diamine Indigo; Omas Sepia.