Never get off the train.
Readers of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and viewers of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now will know that it's better never to get out of the boat. I haven't travelled by boat since a school trip to France in 1988 involved taking a ferry from Dover to Calais, but I found myself considering not getting off the train on Wednesday afternoon.
I was on my way to do some external examining at a university in the north of England, and I found myself at one point on a train bound for Nottingham. I knew that I had to change services long before the train reached its destination, but I started to wonder, somewhere between Crewe and Birmingham, what would happen if I stayed in the carriage until the train reached its terminus. These thoughts arose because I already knew, thanks to a fellow member of the Fountain Pen Network, that the city to which I was actually travelling is hopeless for ink. Don't expect to find anything but Quink, I was warned. Nottingham, by way of contrast, is home to Pen Sense. While I have never been fortunate enough to visit this shop, I have only ever heard good things about it -- some say it's the best pen shop in the UK -- and the Inkette bought me some Montegrappa and Mont Blanc ink from the store when she stayed in the city a few years ago. Couldn't I just pretend to the university awaiting my presence and signature that I fell asleep and ended up in a different part of the country? Would it really matter if dozens of students couldn't get their final degree results because their external examiner had gone missing ink action?
I decided that the Nottingham detour would have to remain a fantasy, but it wasn't long before I started to consider another devious plan, this time involving the 'accidental' missing of my connection at Birmingham New Street. As I mentioned in an entry from almost exactly a year ago (when I was making the same journey, ink fact), a branch of The Pen Shop lies not too far from New Street ... but far enough to make getting there and back in ten minutes an impossibility. (Note to CEO of The Pen Shop: please get someone who knows how to punctuate to design your website. It's no good claiming that 'writing is for ever' if the writing on your site is forever marred by a total disregard for basic punctuation.) As the train pulled in to the strange subterranean platform at Birmingham, I gave serious thought to a crazed dash over to The Pen Shop (and an accompanying phone call to the university to tell them that I would be several hours late), but my interfering superego intervened and I ended up using the ten minutes between trains to cheer myself up with an espresso and a pastry, and by enjoying the fact that train tickets, as the image posted above shows, now use the London Underground typeface on the reverse, even if bought outside London. (Have, inkidentally, people been misreading Anna Karenina all these years? Does she throw herself underneath the train simply because she doesn't have time between connections to go and buy some ink from a nearby -- but not quite nearby enough -- shop? Have love, obsession, and paranoia nothing to do with the tragedy? We're told at one point that her estranged husband is a connoisseur of writing instruments, so perhaps Anna has similar inkterests. Maybe they first met over a bottle of ink in a Moscow pen shop. Note to self: pen fat prequel to Anna Karenina entitled Kareninka v. Kareninka: The Stationery Years.)
After I had checked into my hotel and unpacked the three pens stowed away for the trip (next to my shiny new travelling shaving brush), I walked down to the taxi rank near the bus station in order to make the final part of my journey to the university. On the way I noticed a small art supply shop. Even though I'd been warned about the dire ink situation in the city, I decided to call in and make some inkquiries.
'Do you have any ink for fountain pens?', I asked the men at the counter.
'Yes', one of them replied, pointing at a small shelf behind me. 'We have some Parker Quink over there.'
'Do you have anything that isn't Quink?', I asked, trying (but inkevitably failing) not to sound rude.
'Uh, yes', he answered. 'Some of those inks next to the Quink should go through a fountain pen okay.'
My hopes raised, I turned and bent down to inkspect the shelf. All I could see were bottles of Winsor and Newton drawing ink. I got out of there as quickly as I could, making the sign of the nib in the air as I went. The horror! The horror! Never get out of the boat.
Let's be perfectly clear about this: Winsor and Newton drawing inks will not 'go through a fountain pen okay'. They will destroy a fountain pen by causing disastrous clogging. To tell a customer that such shades are suitable for use in a delicate fountain pen is a little like informing a driver of a petrol-powered car that 'diesel will be fine' in the tank.
This, ink fact, is not the first time that I have heard such idiotic advice handed out: the Inkette was told precisely the same thing when looking for ink for me in an art shop in Oxford a couple of years ago. I wonder, then, if anyone who sells ink should have to obtain a licence to do so. Alcohol cannot be sold (in the UK, at least) unless a special permit has been secured, and I'm pretty sure that pubs and bars still have, even though some of the country's licensing laws have been relaxed in recent times, to display the name of the licensee above the door. Couldn't the practice be extended to anywhere that sells ink? We fearless defenders of the ancient nib often spend considerable amounts of money on our writing instruments, but our simple inkquiries about colours sometimes place our precious pens in peril. When I walk into a pen shop, I want to see the name of a properly vetted and licensed ink seller above the door, and I want to know that any questions I might have will be answered by someone who knows what he or she is talking about. No more quackery! No more licentiousness! Instead of the chaos, the licence. Instead of the lie, sense.
Ink in use today: Noodler's FPN Tulipe Noire.
Ink used yesterday to sign students' degree certificates: Noodler's Sequoia.
PS: As my journey led to no new ink, and as my good friend and honorary Penquod crew member Eileen always seems to blow all of her external examiner's fee on a new fountain pen, I'm about to spend some of my honorarium by placing an order for some new ink with The Writing Desk. I know that I want some Sailor Grey, but I'll see if anything else catches my eye...
PPS (8.30pm): I have now ordered the Sailor Grey, and I will report back as soon as it arrives. I'm hoping for something that falls somewhere between Herbin Gris Nuage and Noodler's Lexington Gray, and I'd love the colour to be as magical as the old Omas Grey, but I can already sense the grey clouds of disappointment gathering.
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