Kelvink scale

At what temperature does ink freeze?

I need to know the answer to this question because I am preparing the Penquod for its imminent voyage to Canada. As usual, significant amounts of time have been devoted to the choice of ink for the journey. I normally travel with my Visconti Van Gogh pen and a particular shade of ink in cartridges, but things are a little more complicated than usual this time because I have been looking at weather forecasts for, and webcam broadcasts from within, Montréal.

It’s looking rather cold out there. As the first image displayed above shows, the temperature is expected to drop to -10 degrees tonight (although it will feel like -19), and snow is predicted. The street scene captured from a live webcam moments ago and reproduced in the second picture above certainly looks like a chilly -19 to me, although I’m not sure how much difference nine degree makes on the other side of zero. As far as I'm concerned, freezing is freezing.

I don’t know if -19 would be classed as cold by those accustomed to Montréal’s climate. For all I know, I'm turning up in the middle of an unseasonably warm spell. (When I was in Las Vegas in August several years ago, I was rather started to hear a 106-degree day described by the weatherman as ‘a cooler one’.) For me, however, -19 is unthinkably chilly. Has it ever been that cold in Wales? Temperatures got pretty low during the Big Chill of 1982, it’s true, but I don’t remember it being quite that frosty.

But it’s not really my fragile body that I’m worried about; it’s my ink. Roland Barthes has plenty of advice about 'writing degree zero', but he doesn't discuss writing below degree zero. What’s going to happen if the Montréal weather causes the cartridge in my precious writing instrument to freeze solid? Will the feed of the pen crack? Will the cartridge explode as it expands, or is there enough ‘give’ in the plastic? (With this latter question in mind, I’ve just popped a spare cartridge into the freezer at Ink Towers. I will be monitoring its status on an hourly basis.)

I was planning on travelling with my Sailor Sapporo for a change on this occasion, but I’m now worried that Sailor ink is likely to crystallize more quickly than the Herbin Lie de Thé that would accompany my Visconti. My unhinged ‘logic’ works like this: Japan is probably a warmer country than France, so pen manufacturers wouldn’t have to worry too much about the freezing point of their ink. Actually, though, this is pure speculation: I don’t actually know for certain that Japan is warmer than France. I’ve simply never seen a snowy image of Tokyo, and the country is called the Land of the Rising Sun, not the Land of the Falling Blizzard, after all.

You are, dear readers, probably shouting the following at your screens as you read this: ‘Why don’t you just buy some Noodler’s Polar ink?’ I have considered investing in a bottle of these miraculous freeze-resistant inks for the trip, but the problem is that Noodler’s is not available in cartridges, which is how I prefer to carry ink when on the move. When it comes to Noodler’s on this occasion, in other words, I’m afraid that we’re dealing with a freeze out.

Even if my ink remains in liquid form throughout my stay, however, I have another anxiety. I have already made a list of pen shops in Montréal and worked out how far they are from my hotel. But these meticulous plans rely upon my being able to walk unhindered around the city. What if the snow keeps on falling and prevents me from wanderink around? I don’t own any sensible snow shoes, so I’m probably going into this mission with inadequate equipment and training. Should I, in the time between now and my departure, go and practise walking on a frozen surface in Cardiff’s ice rink? I’ve had a look at the website, and there are plenty of public sessions, but I can’t see anything about the rink being open to people who want merely to rehearse walking from pen shop to pen shop in sub-zero Canadian cities. (‘No, I don’t need to hire any skates, thank you, but do you mind if I go in wearing my everyday shoes? Oh, and could I try it while carrying several shopping bags and a takeaway espresso cup?’)

I will report back when I return, dear readers, but don’t hold your breath for good news. I’m starting to get cold feet about this trip.

Inks in use today: Noodler’s Sequoia; Diamine Grey.

UPDATE -- 2.10pm

I have just checked the cartridge placed in the freezer some hours ago, and there has been a major inkident. As the third image posted above displays, the cartridge exploded when the ink froze. My picture isn't very clear, but you might just be able to make out the piece of frozen ink protruding from the top of the object. I am now extremely worried about related inkidents occurring while I'm in Montréal. What if the explosion happens in my pocket while I'm out walking near a grassy knoll and a book depository? (Old friend Nixon has kindly offered to lend me his snowboots for the trip, inkidentally. I have politely declined, not because they're the very boots that failed to stop him fracturing his wrist during a recent trip to Tahoe, but because I have, as I always do when faced with difficult sartorial choices, asked myself the decisive question: What would Cary Grant do? I simply can't imagine him wearing snowboots; I think that he would simply soldier on through the blizzard in his polished brogues, so I shall venture north by northwest in a similar fashion.)

I need, furthermore, to correct my earlier (completely unresearched) claim about France being colder than Japan. Nixon, who used to live in Hong Kong, has informed me that Japan gets just as cold as, if not a lot colder than, France. It looks, then, as if I will be travelling with my Japanese pen and ink.

Terminkal 5

Two days ago, a man climbed the perimeter fence at Heathrow Airport and ran onto the runway.

Okay, that's not as striking an inkipit as the one that Paul Auster came up with for Leviathan ('Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin'), but Auster had fiction on his side; I am referring to a real-life event.

As far as I know, the man's motives are still unknown. Terrorism, it seems, was quickly ruled out, but today's coverage of his appearance in court to be charged with endangering aircraft makes no reference whatever to the reason for his actions. As the Queen was due to open the controversial new Terminal 5 at Heathrow the following day, there has been speculation that the invasion might have been related to previous ecological protests against the new building and the plans for an extra runway at the airport.

I have a theory that Terminal 5 is involved, but it has nothing to do with the environment. I've been paying careful attention in recent months to the publicity surrounding the opening of the new building. This is not, I'm afraid, because I have been campaigning furiously against the terminal on the grounds that more planes will lead to more ecological damage. No, my interest is much more superficial -- and much less politically correct -- than that: I simply think it's a magnificent building. I've been admiring the architecture on the dedicated British Airways website for some time, and I was delighted to see a short feature on the terminal on last weekend's Culture Show. (The fact that the first part of Brian Eno's majestic Music for Airports accompanied footage of the building only added to my ethically dubious pleasure.)

One thing has been bothering me, though. (Isn't there always something?) There's been a lot of discussion in the press about the thriling variety of shops on offer in Terminal 5: Prada, Mulberry, and Smythson boutiques, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, and so on. There has, however, been no mention of a branch of The Pen Shop. Travellers who have used Terminals 1, 2, and 4 at Heathrow will know that it's possible to purchase ink, fountain pens, or -- for in-flight drooling -- the latest issue of Pen World magazine in the departure lounge. What, then, is the situation at Terminal 5?

I've studied the British Airways site carefully, and there's no mention of a Pen Shop in the long list of outlets. Tucked away in a dusty corner of The Pen Shop's own site, however, the good news is quietly announced: there will is a branch at Terminal 5. Why is this not mentioned on the British Airways website, and why have the many press reports on the new building's dazzling features not thought to mention this crucial fact? Why, moreover, does the Terminal 5 website advertise the existence of a branch of JD Sports (the sheer monstrosity of the modern world is encapsulated nowhere better than in the desire to to buy nylon clothing while waiting for a plane) and -- you'll never believe it -- a Travelex bureau de change, but completely ignore a small haven for lovers of real ink and fountain pens?

Here, then, is my theory about the man who scaled the perimeter fence: I think that he was an inkthusiast who wanted only to know if he would be able to buy a bottle of ink from Terminal 5. The press has been so silent on the matter that he probably missed the buried reference to it on The Pen Shop's website. I did this myself when I recently checked the site, ink fact, so I took matters into my own curious hands in a more restrained (and, above all, legal) manner some weeks ago. I am travelling to Montréal at the end of the month, so I deliberately chose to fly with British Airways in the hope that I would find myself departing from Terminal 5. Air Canada had a fare that was slightly cheaper, but I had read that the new building at Heathrow will be reserved for British Airways flights, so I happily handed over the higher amount, even though I knew that this would almost certainly rule out a maple-syrup-themed in-flight snack. (Ink is not the only liquid in a bottle that I plan to bring back from Montréal in industrial quantities, dear readers.)

My brilliant plan failed, however, as it now turns out that Terminal 5 will not start accepting passengers until a day or two after I have departed. From dull old Terminal 4. And, for some reason, even though I return to this green, unpleasant land on a long-haul British Airways flight after the building becomes functional, I will, according to my ticket, also be landing at Terminal 4. It's like something out of Beckett. (If I'd been travelling after 30 April, it seems, according to the image displayed above, that my brilliant plan would have worked.) Can I never get it right or be fashionable? Must I always be kept at a distance from what I want? My arrival on a Beckett Airways flight in a forgotten building, with gleaming Terminal 5 just out of reach, will be like the wonderful moment in Stardust Memories where Woody Allen finds himself trapped on a misery-filled train while the happy people party in a carriage on the opposite tracks. My persecution by the world is terminal.

Ink in use today: Diamine Grey.

Inkhalation

'How does it feel when you cough?'

My doctor asks me this question as he presses his stethoscope to my chest and back and listens to my breathing.

'How does it feel when I cough?'

'Yes.'

I want to say, 'Well, it feels like what happens when you're writing with a sharp italic nib, making pretty lines, and then suddenly the edge of the nib catches and digs into the paper', but I can see that the doctor has a rollerball pen on his desk, so I decide against the analogy and simply say that it's extremely painful.

'You have bronchitis, tracheitis, and a chest infection', he eventually concludes. 'I'm going to prescribe some antibiotics for the infection, and I'll give you an inhaler to help you breathe during the coughing fits. Have you ever used an inhaler?'

I tell him that I haven't. I know what they look like and how they work, though, as I've seen friends with asthma use them. Perhaps because I am a new to the 'IVAX Salamol CFC-free Inhaler', the doctor also tells me that he's going to give me a special plastic 'AeroChamber' to make the whole process easier. He removes a demonstration model from his cabinet and explains the procedure to me: the inhaler slots into the one end of the tube, where it's held in place by a rubber seal; I breathe out, place my mouth over the other end of the tube, press the top of the inhaler down, and slowly take the magical substance into my wounded lungs.

Having given a name to my illness (I nearly cried out 'Is it lupus?', à la Constanza, as I was being examined) and prescribed a cure, the doctor sends me on my way, telling me as I leave to 'take things easy' until I am back to full health. Taking things easy probably doesn't include running to the chemist to have my prescription made up, but my legs seem to move more quickly than usual as I walk down the street, for I am desperate to get my hands on the AeroChamber. From what I have seen in the surgery, I believe that the inhalation device -- pictured above -- has potential as an inkhalation device.

As soon as the doctor removed the plastic contraption from his cabinet, I thought that it looked like a much larger version of the Visconti travelling inkpot. (See my entry of 27 December 2007 for a more detailed discussion of the latter.) It's true that there are certain crucial differences -- the inkpot, above all, is only open at one end -- but the potential for modification is there, especially because the mouthpiece of the AeroChamber has a cap that could be glued or melted into place to create a device with just one opening. The key point of similarity is the rubber seal that holds either pen or inhaler in place. It's designed to fit snugly around the intruding object in an airtight grip. If the seal on the AeroChamber could somehow be made tighter, the device could, in other words, be transformed into a giant travelling inkpot.

Why would I, the owner of an elegant Visconti inkpot, need such a thing? It's all about size, dear readers. As the second image displayed above reveals, the AeroChamber is significantly larger than the Visconti device. I haven't done any tests (I need to be able to breathe, after all, dear readers), but I estimate that the AeroChamber could easily hold a couple of full bottles of ink. The Visconti, by way of comparison, will probably hold enough ink to fill a converter just four or five times. This is adequate for short voyages, of course, but I'm conscious of the fact that the Penquod sets sail for a five-day trip to Montréal in a couple of weeks. Will the Visconti be large enough? I had, until yesterday, thought of buying a second inkpot, but they cost a little over £30, and I'm keen to save as much money as possible for Montréal's pen shops. (Glenn Marcus' excellent list of the world's great pen outlets suggests that there are some real treats awaiting me.) NHS prescriptions in Wales are, on the other hand, thanks to the forward-thinking policies of the devolved Welsh Assembly Government, completely free these days, so a customized AeroChamber is a much more efficient alternative in every possible way. (I have a theory about the making-free of prescriptions and hospital car-parks in Wales. The press often described these moves as 'populist', but didn't pursue this term to its logical conclusion. Yes, they've been hugely popular policies, and I feel sorry for those who live on the other side of the Severn Bridge and who have to pay to be unwell, but they've been popular because nothing is more loved in Wales than illness and gloom. We adore being miserable and racked with disease. Affliction is how we relate to each other, how we judge our fellow citizens. 'There must be something wrong with him -- he's never ill'. 'It was a lovely funeral. Beautiful spread they put on. It'll be my turn soon.' 'You can tell they're posh -- they have fruit on the sideboard when no one's ill'. The beauty of post-devolution Wales is that we can enjoy being ill for free.)

I hereby offer the following advice to fellow inkthusiasts who worry about the capacity of commercially available travelling inkpots: move to Wales and get bronchitis, tracheitis, and a chest infection in the same breath. Tell your doctor that you have never previously used an inhaler, but add, with a theatrical cough, that you've heard good things about the AeroChamber. Hold your free prescription tightly in your hand and rush to the chemist. Tear open the box and look inside. What you see will take your breath away.

Inks inkhaled today: Noodler's Aircorp Blue-Black; Noodler's Eternal Brown.

Instant Dismissal

Ink: stance against the instant.

I renounce all forms of instant communication. Email, telephone, text messaging, fax, even speech itself -- all of these have been banished in an instant from my life. From now on I will, like the angry teenager in Little Miss Sunshine, only use pen and paper. Here is why.

I received yesterday an email from a former student, in which she asked if she could use me as a referee on her CV and on job application forms. I usually get several such requests every week, so this was nothing new, and I am always happy to help. In the email, the student asked, more precisely, if she could 'put [me] down as a referee', so I wrote back, 'By all means put me down'. As I pressed 'Send' and waited for my reply to disappear from the screen, I suddenly noticed that I had actually written the following: 'By all means hold me down'. Scenes from David Mamet's Oleanna flashed through my mind. Moving faster than I have ever moved in my sport-loathing life, I grabbed the mouse and closed the browser window in an instant.

I think I caught the message just in time. It didn't appear as 'sent' in my outbox, but I never trust such things to be accurate. (Les choses sont contre nous, after all.) I retyped my reply, checked it carefully for seeds of law suits, and sent it on its amended way.

I can't help feeling that this wouldn't have happened in a world where communication only existed at the level of pen and paper. The problem with the modern era is that everything has to be instant, immediate. I remember when email first became widespread that people would say things like, 'I can't believe it arrives at the other end as soon as I sent it!'. I'm too young to remember its arrival, but the fax machine must have had a similarly radical impact. No need to wait several days for an envelope of important documents to travel by post from London to New York: just press 'Send'. Meanwhile, to travel back even further in time, the invention of the telephone in the late nineteenth century caused widespread amazement among people who were not used to being able to communicate instantly with other human beings who happened not to be physically present. (I seem to remember that Carolyn Marvin has a great discussion of this in When Old Technologies Were New.)

For me, all of these instances of the instant create the possibility of disaster. When communication is instant, when something you say arrives as soon as you've said it, there's no space for editing, for checking, for spotting monstrous slips. (Fans of Seinfeld will remember a classic episode in which George and Jerry try to steal the tape from a woman's answering machine because George has left a series of offensive messages on it. I can't find a clip from the episode in question on YouTube, but I can't resist offering in its place a link to a sequence from the brilliant later episode where George takes to screening his phone calls so that his girlfriend can't break up with him before they attend a ball.) If, to return to my own faux pas, I'd been writing my reply to the former student by hand, carefully crafting my words with pen and ink, I would probably not have made such a blatant error. I accept that slips of the pen are possible -- Freud devotes a section of the Psychopathology of Everyday Life to them, ink fact -- but I feel that they're less common. If you have any doubts about my thesis, just look at how many emails and text messages littered with typos you receive, and then compare your total with the number of similar slips in handwritten letters. Instant communication, it seems, leads people (including me) to be sloppy with language. Without the pen, the id breaks out of its pen. As usual, Cole Porter had his finger on the pulse:

Good authors, too, who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose --
Anything goes.

While I sit here and await instant dismissal from employment, then, I have dismissed the instant from my life. Only handwritten letters will leave Ink Towers from now on. Fountain pens and paper will save me from future social catastrophes. Ink will bring instant karma by being the instant-calmer.

Inks in use today: Noodler's Aircorp Blue-Black; Private Reserve Burgundy Mist.

The Glas of Glass

We're being subjected to plastic surgery.

Taking a short break from work on Monday, I strolled over to the post office to send some ink vials to honorary Penquod crew members Stefan and Anna. Because they both live in the USA, I was expecting to have to fill in one of those curious little customs slips that inform the Watchmen what is inside each package that arrives from another country. I had my fountain pen primed in my pocket, and I had already decided that 'Ink samples' would be the description. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was a change in Royal Mail procedure. In the past, I've always been handed a slip for completion; on Monday, however, the employee behind the glass (the irony of which will become apparent in a moment) asked me what was in the package so that she could complete the form.

'Ink samples', I proudly declared.

'Pink sandals?', she queried, pen poised.

'No, ink samples.' The man standing at the next window stopped what he was doing and looked over, puzzled.

'Oh, ink samples', she replied, starting to write the words -- with a ballpoint, of course -- on the slip. Suddenly, she stopped.

'They're not in glass containers, are they?', she queried, scrutinizing my face for suspicious signs.

'No, they're in plastic vials', I said. Because I was telling nothing but the truth, so help me Penquod, I didn't need to fall back upon the wise words of George Costanza: 'Remember, Jerry: it's not a lie if you believe it'.

'Oh, that's okay. Glass would have been tricky.'

I resisted the urge to say, 'I'm sorry, but I can't hear you through the glass'. Two packages of ink were about to be handed over, after all, and their safe passage to Stefan and Anna was uppermost in my mind.

I take this new prohibition against glass as crystal-clear proof of the growing global conspiracy against ink and inkthusiasts. More often than not, our sacred fluid is sold in glass bottles; I can, ink fact, think of few companies that offer ink in plastic containers. The project, then, is evidently to make it impossible for us to move ink around the world, to (l)ink up with other inkthusiasts. Our bottles are being squeezed into a bottleneck. This is, if I may invoke the work of Jacques Derrida for a moment, the glas of glass.

I am not, I should add, wholly opposed to the existence of plastic. As I was carrying my revived iMac back from the Apple shop to the car this afternoon, I couldn't help admiring the utter beauty of the white plastic object that was cradled fondly in my arms. Many of my precious fountain pens are made of some kind of plastic, too, and Ink Towers is, thanks to the insatiable needs of Baby Ink, filled with countless bright and boisterous plastic toys. There is, as Roland Barthes points out in his one of his wonderful little mythologies, something miraculous and magical about plastic. 'Despite having the names of Greek shepherds (Polystyrene, Polyvinyl, Polyethylene)', he writes, 'plastic ... is in essence the stuff of alchemy.'

But the miracle, Barthes continues, is ultimately a hollow one. (You might say that plastic is a plastic miracle, bearing in mind the Oxford English Dictionary's observation that 'plastic' can mean 'Artificial, unnatural; superficial, insincere.') 'It is', he concludes, 'the first magical substance which consents to be prosaic.' Its sound, for Barthes, is 'hollow and flat', and its colours are never quite right: 'Of yellow, red and green, it keeps only the aggressive quality, and uses them as mere names, being able to display only concepts of colours.' (Everything you need to know about the majesty of Roland Barthes is in that sentence, inkidentally.)

As usual, Barthes is right. Plastic has its uses -- many people owe their lives and their happiness to it -- but I wouldn't want the gloaming of glass to be upon us. There is something unique, something magical, something glassical about the sound of a freshly filled fountain pen being tapped lightly against the rim of a crystal bottle. And it's hard to imagine a plastic container ever reaching the elegantly sculpted heights of, say, an Omas ink bottle. (Readers unfamiliar with this dainty object can consult the photograph at the top of the 'About me' section to the right of this page.) I wouldn't want a world of glass or a body of glass -- the latter is a sign of madness in Descartes' Discourse on the Method -- but it doesn't take too much crystal-gazing to see that it's time for a little plasticonoclasm.

Inks drawn from glass bottles today: Diamine Indigo; Noodler's Eternal Brown; Private Reserve Burgundy Mist.