It's Too Late to Stop Now!

I'm clearly doomed to find myself obsessively in search of the perfect typeface, for I have just learnt from Hugh that a new film called Helvetica is about to be released. According to the official website, it's 'a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture' which 'looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives'. I haven't even seen it, but I think that I have a new favourite film. It will, no doubt, be released on four screens at my local multiplex. It's just a shame that it's not playing here this weekend, for it's our wedding anniversary tomorrow. I can think of no better gift for the Inkette than a ticket for Helvetica. For the woman who has everything: a documentary about typefaces.

Grotesque

Is the obsession about to split again?

You may remember, dear readers, the earth-shatteringly dramatic moment when the monomaniacal search for the perfect ink suddenly separated into two: the hunt for the perfect brown, and the hunt for the perfect blue. I sense that another division may be in the wings. Yes, the quest for the perfect typeface may be on the verge of unfolding.

I blame it all on an Ink Quest reader who shall go by the pseudonym of Hugh. Having read Tuesday's post about my love of the serif, he emailed with some fascinating thoughts about typefaces. (I already know what the Inkette's facial expression will be when she reads the phrase 'some fascinating thoughts about typefaces'.) First, he informed that sans serif faces can actually be called by the technical name 'grotesque'. Never has a specialist term been more appropriate. Second, he suggested a few 'grotesques' that I might find preferable to the culprits named and shamed on Tuesday. One of his tips was Lucida Grande, which I was pleased to discover that I already own. I think that this might be my saviour for those work-related documents that must be devoid of serifs. I'd even say, in fact, that Lucida is rather cheekily gesturing in the direction of a serif face in places (look at its 'a', for instance, if you have it on your computer) while officially enjoying the privileges of being sans.

But the most thrilling part of Hugh's email was the sentence in which he recommended a book by Simon Loxley called Type: The Secret History of Letters. I've had a look at its description on Amazon, and I think that it could be the sacred text that I've been waiting for. (The brief discussion of the London Underground typeface in Adrian Forty's Objects of Desire was not long enough to satisfy my curiosity.) I'm going to order a copy of it from my local bookshop this afternoon. Let the new obsession begin!

As I walked through the centre of the city to a meeting yesterday afternoon, I found myself inspecting every typeface I found. (Hugh warned that this would happen.) Particularly ugly, I discovered, is the one used for the text that explains to people how they should use pedestrian crossings. (Is there really anyone who still needs to be told to press the button and wait for the green man to appear on the other side of the road?) The letter 't', I suddenly noticed, has a horrible slant on the top of its upright stroke. I will never use a pedestrian crossing again, and I will be writing to the government to demand the flattening-out of the 't' in all such places. Never mind the cuts to education and the NHS; what about the cuts to the letter 't'?

I think that I'm searching for the perfect typeface because I find the process of seeing my words appear as type slightly grotesque. Writing by hand allows me to choose the size of the nib, the colour of the ink, and the feel of the paper, and I can make the strokes in a variety of ways. But the experience, say, of typing onto my computer the very words that you are now reading is completely different: a typeface is fixed, solid (this is where the word 'stereotype' comes from, of course), and not designed by me. It bears no mark of my handwriting, that is to say, and it's no coincidence that I can't type my signature. If I'm working in Word, it's true that I can change the colour of the words, just as I would change the colour of the ink in my pen, but many of the software's shades are completely impractical upon the screen. And the screen itself is not like a sheet of paper -- I cannot feel its texture.

I fear that I'm beginning to sound a little like Martin Heidegger, who once launched a violent philosophical attack upon the move from handwriting to typing. As he put it:

This ‘history’ of the kinds of writing is one of the main reasons for the increasing destruction of the word. The latter no longer comes and goes by means of the writing hand, the properly acting hand, but by means of the mechanical forces it releases. The typewriter tears writing from the essential realm of the hand, i.e., the realm of the word. The word itself turns into something ‘typed’.

When this happens, he concluded, humans are ‘plunged into an eminent oblivion of Being’.

I wouldn't go that far. (Or maybe I would: the misanthrope in me quite likes the sound of 'an eminent oblivion of Being'.) But it's clear that I need a typeface with which I can happily work, with which I can keep my hand in. Perhaps I should channel all of the Penquod's funds into paying to have my very own typeface designed (by hand, of course). Apple would then need to launch a new computer -- the inkMac -- with a screen that used real ink to display its characters, of course, and I'd also have to commission a printer that sprayed Omas Sepia from its cartridge. The hand is coming back, and it has inky fingers.

Inks in use today: Omas Sepia; Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue.
Typefaces in use today: Windsor Light Condensed; Lucida Grande.

Sans We Have Not Loved

Not my type.

This was the conclusion I came to today while trying to choose a sans serif typeface to use on a handout for a seminar. I'm normally a serif man, you see, dear readers -- Windsor Light Condensed, as used by Woody Allen in his credits, is my current obsession; its flamboyant ampersand, pictured above, makes Liberace look staid -- but the university recently recommended that we use sans serif type wherever possible, as it's easier for students with dyslexia to read. We're also encouraged not to use white paper, as the sharp contrast of black print on a white background can also disrupt the reading of anyone who has the condition.

The announcement of the latter didn't bother me at all; I'm perfectly happy to use the coloured paper with which we're now provided. But I have found it very difficult to adjust to a sans serif workplace, as I simply find such typefaces bland. A serif adds romance to a life, I feel. It makes type less typical. The sans serif face, by way of contrast, is faceless. It only screams 'I do not care about the work I'm doing' and 'I will render your polished prose prosaic' to me.

When the announcement about the taboo on serifs came down from on high, I initially considered resigning and petitioning my local MP. Not because I don't want to help students with dyslexia, you understand, but simply because I couldn't see how anyone could have an intellectual debate when surrounded by sans serif print. Someone even made the mistake of telling me that 'Arial is fine'. Let's be clear about this: Arial is not fine. It is the most unfine typeface ever devised, in fact. It is the electronic equivalent of a chewed ballpoint. Whose cap has been lost.

I then considered issuing the university with an ultimatum: buy me a copy of the London Underground typeface or I leave. Eric Johnston's classic creation is the only sans serif face that I like, you see, even if the letters 'i' and 'j' are ruined by diamonds. But I soon realized that tantrums would get me nowhere. In the end, I found a sans serif face that I could just about face -- Gill Sans Light -- and I've been grumpily using it ever since.

Until this morning, that is. Perhaps it was the six espressos that led something in me to snap. Gill Sans Light was suddenly unbearable. I searched in desperation through the other options offered to me by Word. The clock was ticking. The start of the seminar was approaching. Arial lurched into the menu. I brushed it away as if it were a cobweb. Various other bland monstrosities tried to catch my eye. Garamond and I exchanged a wistful glance and remembered the good old days. In the end, I settled at random upon a face that I'd never previously noticed. It was so bland that I can't even remember its name. The handouts were printed. Needless to say, the class was decidedly uninspiring.

As I scribbled a note to myself during the seminar (I wasn't making a shopping list; I was simply jotting down a point that a student had made so that I could return to it later), I had a horrific thought about ink. What if the university introduces a policy regulating the colours that can be used in the workplace? Worse still, what if the bureaucrats decide that fountain pen ink is too dangerous for use in lecture theatres? (There could be a spillage. Someone might slip. We could be sued.) What if ballpoints become compulsory? What if the serif were merely the first to fall?

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

Ink: A Silent Way

There's a glorious moment in the version of 'Summertime in England' captured on the recently released Van Morrison Live in Montreux 1974/1980 DVD. Actually, there are many such moments in the performance of that song, but I'm thinking of the one that comes at the very end. He's just led the band through a full-force workout while he sings 'It ain't why -- it just is', but then he takes the volume right down in the way that only Van can. (Does any other artist use the fade-out live in concert? I once saw him, in 1993, take the breath away from a packed Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco by fading 'Sweet Thing' out and then fading in 'My Lagan Love'.) As the band get quieter and quieter, he keeps whispering 'Can you feel the silence?' until there is perfect silence and the song has ended.

I longed to be feeling the silence on my way home this evening while I sat in the waiting room at the railway station. I had just started to read my book when the man sitting opposite me, who must have been in his forties, started working his way through the dozens of ringtones on his mobile phone. At full volume. I tried staring in disbelief, but this had no effect. A braver man than I would have started an argument, of course, but he was large and oaf-like. (An old Max Boyce phrase, shoulders like tall boys, comes to mind.) Undoubtedly a ballpoint user. I also had two delicate fountain pens in my briefcase, and I'm sure that they wouldn't survive a brawl (and certainly not a Cardiff brawl). I sat there trying to read for about ten minutes, therefore, while the idiot used his barely opposable thumbs to blast out a series of monstrous electronic bleeps.

Now, I'm not one of those anti-mobile-phone luddites who believes that we should go back to smoke signals and carrier pigeons, but I simply cannot see why such instruments should come with about fifty different ringtones. What's wrong with a single, simple ringing sound? And I really can't see why a middle-aged man should get excited about such things in a public place. At full volume. Next to me.

My dislike of loud noises perhaps explains my love of ink, though. In fact, not long before my encounter with the brute in the waiting room, I'd been writing for a couple of hours in the university library. As the Penman Mocha flowed delicately from my favourite Stipula italic nib and onto the Clairefontaine paper, I marvelled at the silent smoothness of the whole operation. My words were appearing without a word. That, I think, is the real beauty of ink: when it works well, it's quiet. The colours themselves may be loud, but their arrival on the page is, with the right nib, free from noise. Think of Ink Quest as a series of hymns to the silence.

Inks in use today: Parker Penman Mocha; Noodler's Nightshade.

riverrun

I think I'm dyeing.

While leisurely working my way through the Sunday newspapers (note the shameless decadence of the plural) this afternoon, I spotted a striking image of yesterday's St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Chicago. The accompanying text explained that the Chicago River is dyed green every year on 17 March.

While I doubt very much that ink is used for this event, the sight of green water flowing past Chicago's elegant architecture prompted me to think about the way in which I dispose of ink that I haven't used up before I decide to change the colour currently in my pen. Because I'm reluctant to put ink back into a bottle, I always pour the liquid down the drain. Ink Towers is a few minutes' walk from the sea, and the town's main drainage outlet is at the bottom of the hill that leads from our door to the ocean. In other words, there's a fair chance that my discarded ink -- and my fickle ways mean that I get through quite a bit of the stuff, as I'm sure you can imagine, dear readers -- is making its way to the sea pretty quickly, and in a fairly undiluted form.

As we drove over the Severn Bridge yesterday afternoon, I actually commented to the Inkette that the water below was looking rather brown. I thought at the time that this was merely because the wind was whipping up savage waves, but I'm now a little concerned that I might be to blame, for the Severn flows into the Bristol Channel, and we live on the Welsh side of that very stretch of water. Have I, with my endless flushing-out of my pens, dyed the sea brown? (It's my favourite ink colour, after all, dear readers.) Should I start pouring gallons of blue ink down the drain in order to bring the Bristol Channel back to a more sea-like colour? (But was the Bristol Channel ever blue?)

There is, of course, another reading of the event: it's my first miracle. When faced with water, I turn it into ink. And there's a curious local connection that makes this interpretation decidedly plausible. In the biblical story of the conversion of water into wine, the miraculous event takes place during the Marriage at Cana. It can be no accident that five minutes' drive from Ink Towers lies a part of Cardiff known as Pontcanna, and that this district runs into Canton, the Welsh name for which is Treganna (the rules of the Welsh language make 'Trecanna' impossible, so the 'c' has to mutate into a 'g'). 'Everything is connected in the end', as Don DeLillo puts it.

It's clear, then (unlike the Bristol Channel): I am the world's first wholly secular messiah. But I'm afraid that I have just the one gimmick; don't hold out for a Christ-like 'You shall see greater things than that' from me. I can do ink, but don't expect me to share my pain au chocolat with a crowd of five thousand or walk on the water that I have discoloured. I have been placed on this earth solely to dye for your sins.

Inks in use today: Parker Penman Mocha; Noodler's Manhattan Blue.

Making a Stand

'I actually like writing with ballpoints. It's only because you write like an idiot that you need a fountain pen.'

Also sprach the Inkette this very evening, dear readers. It's clear that my attempts to convert her to the righteous path of ink have failed. I dutifully refilled her Lamy Safari fountain pen this week, but she's taken little interest in it. I'm currently looking into whether or not 'irreconcilable differences' can be extended to 'neglect of writing instrument' under British divorce law. Come to (th)ink of it, our wedding certificate is actually from Las Vegas, so I'm guessing that basically anything goes.

I'm sure, meanwhile, that the Inkette will also be thinking of inkreconcilable differences when she discovers the pen-related object with which I have become obsessed this week: the writing-stand.

The seed was planted when I came across a passage in The Sorrows of Young Werther where Goethe describes how Albert 'stood at his writing-stand, to pen replies'. (Yes, I know that I should have been reading this literary classic for its insight into the nature of love and human tragedy, but I was pen-spotting instead.) It suddenly occurred to me that a writing-stand could be the solution to one of my ongoing problems.

I lead a somewhat sedentary lifestyle, dear readers. I blame it all on my job, of course, which requires me to spend many hours researching in libraries, chained to my desk writing tedious academic essays and books, or sitting in seminar rooms, boring students to tears. (I do get the occasional chance to lecture to a room of about 170, and I can skip flamboyantly around as much as I want then, but most of my teaching is to smaller seminar groups, where standing up would be plain silly.) The problem is that I get bored easily when I'm sitting still; I can rarely work in a library for more than an hour without needing to wander around for a while.

A writing-stand could be my saviour. If I could write while standing up, just like Goethe's Albert, I'd surely finish my articles and books in half the time. I've done a bit of research, and I think that I want a stand that resembles the one in the sixteenth-century illustration of Mark the Apostle posted above. He seems to be sitting, but I think that you could easily work on that divine wooden surface in an upright position. He's even thought to ask the carpenter to build a little shelf beneath the slope for handy snack storage. (I don't quite know why he's holding his quill to his eye in that way, though. Is he using ink as eye drops? Does his devotion to writing instruments run that deep?) I know nothing about religious iconography, but I gather that the (exceptionally happy) lion on the left-hand side of the image proves that the subject of the picture is Matthew. For me, however, it proves that I need a writing-stand like Matthew's, for one of my cats is decidedly lionesque. It's a sign, clearly.

I can see my future unfolding before my eyes, and it's one in which I no longer spend most of my life sitting down. I'm finding my feet at last. I'm going to stand up for my right to stand up.

Inks in use today: Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue; Rohrer and Klingner Alt Bordeaux.

Good Parentink

When it is appropriate to comment on an in-law's parenting techniques?

I ask because we've just discovered that our nine-year-old niece, to whom I shall give the pseudonym Hambel, won first prize for writing in her school's eisteddfod last week. (Footnote for readers unfamiliar with the mysterious customs of Wales: an eisteddfod is basically a festival of literature and music. Welsh schools usually hold eisteddfodau on or around St. David's Day, and there's a huge national one in the summer that alternates between the north and south of the country.)

To reward her for her wonderful achievement, Hambel's parents took her out today to buy her a special gift. She's fascinated with fossils, so she chose a particularly distinguished specimen to add to her collection, and I'm sure that she's admiring it as I type these words.

It seems to me, however, that Hambel's parents missed an opportunity to introduce their daughter -- niece of the author of Ink Quest -- to the wonders of ink. What better reward for winning a writing competition than a first fountain pen? I could have offered advice, weighed up the options, and even made the purchase. I could also have given her private tuition to teach her about the inks available for her new pen. Her eyes may not have lit up in the same way that they no doubt did when she saw the fossil of her dreams, and she may have come to dread her weekly revision sessions with Uncle Ink (In which year did Parker phase out the Penman range of inks, and is it possible to find a modern match for Penman Ruby? Don't look at the ceiling -- I've told you this once already. Concentrate, child!), but she would have entered the circle of the elite, the inky-fingered misfits of the world. And I would have gained a protégé, one to whom I could pass on my boundless ink-related wisdom.

The Inkette has told me that I cannot intervene, however. I, the fossil, must leave my niece to her fossils. It seems that you don't talk ink laws with in-laws.

Ink in use today: Noodler's FPN Galileo Brown.

PS: This Eisteddfod-related entry has just awakened a long-dormant memory. I have discussed in an earlier post the problems that I had with my handwriting when I was in school. What I had forgotten until this evening, though, was that my parents, presumably in attempt to turn my scrawl into something legible, bought me a Parker fountain pen. It was one of those Parker 25s that were all the rage in the late 1970s and early 1980s (the precise moment at which I was struggling to make myself readable in junior school). I believe that I used it to enter one of the competitions in the Eisteddfod that year, but you don't need me to tell you the result, do you, dear readers? (Just look back to the Beckett quote in Wednesday's post for a clue.) I believe, too, that I did not use cartridges with the pen -- my sudden recollection of this writing instrument has brought with it a memory of squeezing the side panel on a Parker converter -- but I cannot remember our house ever containing a bottle of ink. This is all very strange. I've unwittingly started to find fossils of my own life. Did I grow up in an earlier version of Ink Towers but never know it? Did the Ink Quest begin that early, but then go into a state of suspended animation for about twenty years? Was I captured at some point in my childhood by evil ballpoint-wielding agents who erased my early memories of ink? Is this how the biro maintains its rule?

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

At this very moment twenty years ago, I was getting ready to run.

I was fifteen years old, and the new U2 album, The Joshua Tree, was due for release. I idolized them at the time, and I had, along with several other school friends, been waiting for 9 March 1987 for months. We'd heard one or two of the tracks on the radio -- I think that we may even have picked up, and desperately taped onto a C90, a very weak signal from RTE at one point -- but most of the album was a mystery. These were the days before the internet, of course, so there had been no global circulation of high-quality leaked copies.

There was one problem, however. On the morning of 9 March, we were supposed to be in school. More importantly, we were supposed to be in a revision class for our forthcoming Maths 'O' Level examination. The only record shop in our small town was a good twenty-five minutes' walk from the school, and it didn't open until after the school day had begun. We came up with a cunning plan. We had a fifteen-minute break in the middle of the morning (at 11am, I believe), so we decided that we would run all the way to the record shop, buy the album (on vinyl, of course), and then run back to school before the break finished. We even had a trial run on a Saturday several weeks before 9 March, and we were pretty confident that we could make it.

The monumental morning came, and we prepared ourselves for the sprint. The bell rang to mark the beginning of the break, and we raced down the stairs, out of the building, and towards the town centre. I don't know if it was the sheer excitement -- I'd barely slept the previous night -- but we didn't seem to be running very quickly. And then I developed a stitch less than half way to our target. We eventually arrived at the record shop at around the time that the other pupils would be returning to class. If I hadn't been so ecstatic finally to hold The Joshua Tree, I think that I would have been in a state of anxiety. Albums in hand, we ran as fast as we could (a wheezing canter, in other words) back to our revision lesson.

We arrived at the classroom something like twenty-five minutes late. I vaguely remember a brief conference in the corridor, in which we tried to formulate a convincing excuse. While my other memories of the day are crystal clear, this is where it gets a bit hazy. How on earth did we persuade our teacher that we had a genuine reason for being late, particularly when we were all carrying copies of the new U2 album. I don't think that we got into trouble, but I have no idea why this was the case. The rest of the school day is a similar blur, in fact; all I remember about the remainder of 9 March is getting home and listening to the album for hours on end.

But what, I hear you cry, does this have to do with ink? Well, as I've been wandering down memory lane this morning, I decided to dig out some old photographs from the period. The picture posted above, in fact, was, if I remember correctly, actually taken on 9 March 1987. I'm standing by the crossing on the way to the record shop. (The three heroic figures who made the dash were taking photography classes at the time, so we decided to capture the event on film. You can, if you look closely, see that I am holding a camera. This is the only surviving shot.) I have blurred my face to protect my identity. Yes, I know -- I should have blurred the hairstyle as well.

As I laughed out loud at my former self this morning, I couldn't help thinking that he had no interest in ink or fountain pens. This is a unsettling fact. How can I be the person in the picture when the person in the picture does not share my obsession? He knows nothing about the Ink Quest, and he would probably have found such an activity wholly insane. And yet he's me. Or an inkarnation of me, at least. He still hasn't found what I'm looking for.

Inks in use today: Parker Penman Mocha; Parker Penman Sapphire.

Mochappiness

It's a smoky one.

As I reported last night, dear readers, I saved my new Parker Penman Mocha ink for this morning. I have a lot of writing to do today, so it was an encouraging little treat to myself. I've been using it in my faithful Visconti Van Gogh for several hours now, and I'm delighted to report that it's a gorgeous dark brown. I can't think of a colour currently in production that it resembles; in terms of darkness, Noodler's Walnut is close, but they're by no means interchangeable. In short, the Mocha looks good enough to drink, and it has a moody smokiness that is truly spectacular.

Its smoky qualities might mean that I only have a few weeks to enjoy it, however, for a leaflet pushed through my letterbox this morning (and reproduced above) reminds all residents of Wales that a complete ban on smoking in enclosed public places comes into force on 2 April. (I think, but I'm not entirely sure, that the situation is going to be different in England.) The university at which I work, meanwhile, has taken the ban one step further: from the date in question, there is to be no smoking anywhere on university land, even in wide-open spaces. I don't quite know how they're going to stop staff and students smoking as they walk from building to building, but that would be appear to be the rule as it has come down from on high.

I'm a little anxious that the workplace ban will affect my ability to carry a smoky ink inside one of my fountain pens. If I write with it in a seminar, will students be able to allege that I have subjected them to passive smoking? Will the university's security guards -- some of whom are quite fond of putting their uniforms to work -- check my briefcase when I arrive for work in the morning? Should I enjoy the Mocha while I can, before I become a criminal? Is my happiness about to go up in smoke?

Inks in use today: Parker Penman Mocha; Parker Penman Sapphire.

PS (7.15pm): I have been before the law sooner than expected. I have just returned from my local Italian restaurant, where I noticed a new sign on the wall. It stated, even though the new regulations have yet not officially come into force, that it is illegal to smoke anywhere on the premises. (I've added a picture of the sign above; these are going to be standard issue, apparently.) But I had my Mocha-filled Visconti in the pocket of my coat while I was inside the restaurant. I have broken the law before the law even exists, become an outcast before it's technically possible to do so. This is how out of place in the world I am.

Of Monsters and Misanthropes

The monster is dead.

There was no alternative. It changed colour again yesterday afternoon, and the desperate addition of a few drops of Diamine Royal Blue simply ruined the entire batch. I poured it down the drain and washed every last trace away with holy water.

The word 'monster', Michel Foucault reminds us somewhere (The Order of Things? The Archaeology of Knowledge? Madness and Civilization?), shares its root with 'demonstrate', and my monster demonstrated to me that I am a hopeless mixer of inks. My experiment was a total failure, and I have no doubt that other attempts would have led to similar disasters. I have, therefore, abandoned my work on neo-vintage blue. I accept defeat. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. In those twelve words, Samuel Beckett sums up my life.

But there is no need for misery, for my recent posts about the search for the perfect vintage blue ink have prompted a remarkable response from some of the regular readers of Ink Quest. I have had two offers of vials of Parker Permanent Royal Blue Quink. Several people have directed me to bottles of the magical liquid being auctioned on eBay. Others have sent mixing tips or messages of support. And to top it all, I arrived in work this morning to find a package waiting for me from Ink Quest reader Noelle, who, you may recall, had offered to send me a small container of Parker Penman Sapphire. The parcel contained more than this, in fact, dear readers; I also found vials of Noodler's FPN Galileo Brown and Parker Penman Mocha. I'm saving the latter for tomorrow, but I have just filled Blue Beauty and Black Beauty with the Sapphire and the Galileo Brown. They are truly glorious colours, and the hold of the Penquod has been greatly enriched by their arrival. The brown is not a million miles away from Waterman Havana -- it has a hint of red, but it keeps this firmly under control, unlike the Havana. The Penman Sapphire, meanwhile, is truly something to write home about. I know that it's a deeply controversial ink -- mainly because it's so deeply saturated -- but it just has something special about it. It could probably be mistaken for DC Supershow Blue from a distance, but a closer inspection reveals a subtle difference. I can't quite put my finger on this difference, however, but it might have something to do with the red hue of the Supershow; the Sapphire seems to be both a touch lighter and a little more 'solid', if that makes any sense.

All of these philanthropic gestures are too much for a miserable misanthrope who generally does everything that he can to avoid human contact. I thank you all, dear readers, for your boundless generosity. I have made a considerable donation to The Human Fund in all of your names.

Inks in use today: Waterman Havana; Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue; Parker Penman Sapphire; Noodler's FPN Galileo Brown.

Inkstability

From the diary of Dr Frankinkstein, 6 March 2007

It's no good -- the monster has mutated again. I heard it scratching the door and rattling around the house in the dead of night, shifting shape, altering its hue. My creation is clearly profoundly unstable, for what was perfectly balanced yesterday evening was, by sunrise, a different beast altogether: the delicate harmony of blue and grey had been transformed into an excessively blue affair.

I cannot control this mutant offspring any longer. It mocks me with a mind of its own. I have fought all afternoon in the laboratory to stabilize the creature, and I have achieved the colour pictured above, but I know that my victory is temporary. If I press my ear to my pen or inkwell, I can already hear the molecules moving into another arrangement, laughing as they do so. I may not live to see another day. The Penquod risks being borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

Inks in use today: Penquod Neo-vintage Blue (batch #3); Rohrer and Klingner Alt Bordeaux.

Spectres of Marks

I think that my attempt to create a perfect neo-vintage blue ink might have disrupted the space-time continuum.

As you know, dear readers, I tried over the weekend to produce, by mixing different colours from my collection, a blue that would have the vintage appearance of Parker Permanent Royal Blue. And you also know that I felt, at the time of yesterday's post, that my first attempt had been a too-blue failure. More grey, I believed, was called for next time.

When we came home yesterday evening from the cinema, however, something rather strange had happened to the ink. We'd been to see Michel Gondry's brilliant new film, The Science of Sleep, in which the border between dream and reality becomes increasingly unclear, and I think that the plot of the film must have spilled over into my house, for the colour that I discovered on my return was unmistakably grey. I shook the pen gently, just in case the two inks had separated, and tried again. The lines continued to come out grey. Had my plans for experiment #2 seeped out of my mind and become reality? Had I somehow slipped forward a day, to a moment at which I'd just mixed up a new, greyer batch? (The Science of Sleep has a brilliant time machine that only allows its user to move backwards or forwards by one second, inkidentally.) I went to bed in a state of confusion and dreamed about swimming in an ocean of vintage Quink.

I fully expected the mysterious ink to have become yellow by this morning, but it was still grey as I sipped my customary quadruple breakfast espresso and pondered my next move. My caffeine levels restored to normal, I retired to the laboratory to work on another batch of Penquod Neo-vintage. I started this time with a 2:1 Gris Nuage/Indigo mix, which looked much better, but still a little too lively. A few further drops of grey and a little splash of water soon corrected this and produced the colour that you can see above.

Well, almost. You can't see it properly because my camera refused to take a proper photograph. It has one of those auto-focus features, and I'm too lazy to work out how to switch it to manual. I selected the 'Super Close-Up' setting and pressed the button. This is normally the point at which the lens adjusts itself until it has focussed upon its target, but the camera was unable to focus this evening. It buzzed, beeped, and groaned, but refused to show anything more than a total blur in the viewfinder. Eventualy, after about twenty minutes and a dramatic increase in the lighting, I managed to get it to capture something close to reality. But it's not quite accurate, I'm afraid, as the colour that I can see on the page of my notebook is a little more distinctive than the one that you can see above.

I take this as proof that I have stumbled across a sacred formula for vintage blue. The reason that I couldn't photograph the marks on my page is that, quite simply, my experiment has conjured up something that's actually a ghost, an immaterial spirit of a shade that expired long ago. (The word 'séance' is etymologically linked to 'sediment', so does this mean that all inks have the potential to bring forth the spirits of the dead?) In tampering with the spectrum of colours, I fear that I have called forth a spectre.

Inks in use today: Penquod Neo-vintage Blue (batch #2); Rohrer and Klingner Sepia; Rohrer and Klingner Alt Bordeaux.

Fix Needed

The syringes have been busy, and here is a picture of the first attempt at creating a neo-vintage ink.

There is clearly still a lot of work to be done, dear readers, as this 4:3 mix of Herbin Gris Nuage and Diamine Indigo hasn't satisfied my craving. I think that I used too much blue, and I'd forgotten that Gris Nuage already has a blue-ish tint to it. I took a tip from honorary Penquod crew member Stefan, who suggested adding a little water to the mixture; this helped, but it couldn't overcome my original error.

I need to go back to the drawing board, then, but I think that I need to wait until the Inkette is in work. 'Why are you wandering around the house at 8.30 in the morning with two syringes in your hand?', she asked in a state of exasperation when she came downstairs just over an hour ago, clearly expecting breakfast to be ready. What's an addict to do?

Ink in use today: Penquod Neo-vintage Blue (batch #1).

Drugstore Idiot

I've been out scoring syringes to feed my habit.

Still craving the vintage ink discussed in the previous post, I decided yesterday afternoon to devote my weekend to the creation of a neo-vintage colour. The plan is to add a a classic blue (Diamine Indigo) to a pale grey (Herbin Gris Nuage) in the hope that something vaguely resembling Parker Permanent Royal Blue will be produced.

Whenever I've mixed inks together in the past, I've worked without the proper tools. Sometimes I've used a spare converter to draw the inks out of the bottles and transfer them to a third container; on other occasions I've simply poured by hand. This time, though, I decided that I needed to equip myself suitably, and so I have been out this afternoon to buy some syringes.

I thought that a chemist would be the best place to begin my quest. I waited in the queue until I was called forward. 'Do you sell syringes?', I asked the assistant. 'Syringes?', she asked. 'Yes, syringes', I replied. And then I found myself compelled to add, in a rather suspicious manner, 'Not with needles. I don't want needles. Just syringes without needles'. 'Oh', she replied, 'for giving medicine to a baby, you mean?'

This is where I should just have nodded. I could even have replied, perfectly plausibly, 'It's for a cat, actually', and laughed in a jovial manner. (We have a syringe at home especially for washing down worming tablets when the cats are refusing to be fooled by the old let's-just-hide-this-bright-red-object-in-some-pilchards trick.) But I didn't. I couldn't just listen to the sensible little man inside me and give a simple answer that kept me on the right side of normality. As George Costanza once put it, when urged to listen to his inner little man, 'My little man's an idiot'.

Here's what I actually said: 'No, not for a baby; for ink'. Yes, that's right, dear readers: 'No, not for a baby; for ink'. The pharmacist frowned. 'Ink?', she said. 'Yes, ink', I replied. 'I'm mixing some inks together this afternoon, you see'. (My little man could give Costanza's a run for his money any day of the week.) 'Uh ... okay', she said, and disappeared from sight. I expected to hear sirens wailing or to see her return with a tranquilizer dart and a strait-jacket, but, to my amazement, she returned with a plastic package in her hand. 'Would this do?', she asked, holding out the object that you can see pictured above. 'Absolutely -- I'll take three, please', I replied. I handed over the £2.25 (so reasonable!) and made a quick getaway. I glanced back just before I left, though, and the pharmacist was still looked bewildered.

I am now back in my ink den, and I am about to break open the packaging and load up the syringes. Who knows what will happen next? I don't know just where I'm going / But I'm going to try for the kingdom if I can.

Ink in use today: Omas Sepia.

Reginkcide

The king is dead ... long live the king!

It is with great regret that I inform you, dear readers, that Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue has lost its crown. I believed it to be the king of blue inks, and I have remained loyal to it for about a month, but its reign has come to a dramatic end.

The crown fell, the act of 'reginkcide' occurred, when a letter arrived from a Michigan-based reader of Ink Quest. He made an appearance here under the pseudonym of Gerry way back on 6 October 2006, when I discussed unexpectedly receiving a letter from him written in Omas Sepia, so let's use that moniker again today, shall we? Somewhat startled to read in recent entries that my quest for the perfect ink has branched out beyond brown to include blues, Gerry very generously decided to send me a note written with some truly spectacular blue inks from his collection. He began with the mythical Parker Penman Sapphire and then moved on to Omas Roma Blue, Diamine Prussian Blue, and Mont Blanc Blue (or possibly Blue-Black). But one colour in the midst of these delights caught my eye and made my heart royally skip a beat.

It was Parker Permanent Royal Blue, a vintage shade that is no longer manufactured. I have tried to capture its splendour in the photograph posted above, but I fear that my camera cannot do justice to this glorious colour. And I'm struggling to find suitable words to describe it ('All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime / Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme', as Bob Dylan once sang). It's a blue with a decidedly grey tint, but I don't for one moment think that it could be recreated by mixing a modern blue and grey together. Quite simply, it looks like the past. As Gerry so rightly put it: 'Makes even my scribbles look like they are from the Golden Age of correspondence.'

How I wish and wish again (to quote from Irving Berlin's brilliant 'I Want to Go Back to Michigan') that contemporary ink looked like Parker Permanent Royal Blue. Interestingly, Gerry's paragraph in this colour followed one penned in Diamine Prussian Blue, a modern colour that's often said to have a vintage appearance. Alongside the Parker, however, the Diamine looked laughably fresh, a supple-skinned pretender with a few streaks of white added to its hair by a make-up artist.

'Got to go back', then, to quote Van Morrison. 'I guess I just wasn't made for these times', as Brian Wilson once put it. (I'm being rather musical today, aren't I? It is St. David's Day, after all, and we Welsh are supposed to be given to singing.) The present moment has nothing to offer me but the blues when it comes to blues. I have seen perfection, the ink that launched a thousand ships, but I'm going to need a time machine if I'm to gather a proper supply. (Honorary crew members of the Penquod: is there anything you can do below deck about this? Should I arrange a screening of Primer in the entertainment room this evening?) Happiness is clearly in the distant past for me. The future is bright, but I want muted. Georges Bataille was right: 'We will never know authentic joy'. There is no royal road to contentment.

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