The Tine Machine

Would you want to live parts of your life over again?

I'm asking this question in the light of two inkidents that have occurred this week. First, honorary Penquod crew member Anna sent me a link to a post on Pentrace about Allen Ginsberg's use of a Parker 51 fountain pen. As I noted in an earlier Ink Quest entry (11 February 2007, to be precise), I met Ginsberg in San José in 1992; he signed my Kaddish and talked about dropping acid at Tintern Abbey. Second, I have been rereading Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, a book that I have not looked at since the summer of 1993 (roughly one year after my encounter with Ginsberg). It is well known that Auster's novels are filled with references to stationery and fountain pens, and The New York Trilogy is no exception.

Revisiting my memories of meeting Ginsberg and reading Auster for the first time has taken me back about a decade and a half, to a period when I was in my early twenties and living in California. More importantly, I've been catapulted back to the days before my obsession with fountain pens, stationery, and, of course, ink took hold. I'm sure that looking at photographs of myself from the time would depress me (so much weight gained! so many wrinkles earned!), but what has really saddened me is the recognition that I spent the first thirty-something years of my life in a state of ignorance, unaware of the joys of ink. (Yes, I used a fountain pen almost exclusively from about 1997, and I experimented with them before that, but the true obsession didn't really begin until around 2003.) Certain plot twists and lines of dialogue in The New York Trilogy are looking familiar as I'm encountering them again, but I simply cannot remember noticing the references to stationery first time around. Meanwhile, a close inspection of Ginsberg's inscription in my Kaddish leads me to believe that he wasn't using a fountain pen on the day in question, but I have no recollection at all of what type of writing instrument he held in his hand as he chatted. (You can see the image that I first posted in February 2007 by clicking here.)

In both cases, of course, I didn't notice pens, stationery, and ink because I wasn't looking for them. Yes, dear readers, there was a time when the obsession that drives this blog and rules my life (is there a difference?) simply didn't exist. I walked around in the world for several decades without noticing writing instruments and ink.

I want that time back. I want to relive those 'lost years' (in both senses of the phrase) as an inkthusiast. I want to take advantage of the opportuninkties that I blindly missed. Yes, I can go back and reread everything by Paul Auster that I devoured before ink took over my life, and it will no doubt be a joy to find references to fountain pens and stationery that passed my former self by. But Ginsberg, sadly, is no longer alive ('Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes'), so I can't track him down and talk to him about the pleasures of a Parker 51 instead of hallucinogenics and Tintern Abbey. (I wonder now, inkidentally, if he visited the ruin for more than just poetic inspiration, as honorary Penquod crew member and colleague Daphne recently informed me that the gift shop sells little bottles of Tintern Abbey ink.)

Other missed opportuninkties have inevitable come to mind:

- I now know that I studied as an undergraduate in the early 1990s not too far from the Conway Stewart headquarters. Why did I not volunteer to help out on weekends with the checking of ink production or the inspection of nibs?

- I now know that my wanderings around California in 1992-3 took me right past fine pen stores in, among other places, Carmel, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, and Santa Monica. I, however, was far too busy trying to track down places where Van Morrison may have lived in the early 1970s. (If I could find it, I'd post the photograph of a svelte me standing proudly outside what was once, according to an ageing hippy encountered in a coffee house in San Anselmo, Van's house in San Rafael.)

- I now know that the hotel in which stayed during a conference in Strasbourg in 2002 is just around the corner from an excellent pen shop. To make the agony even more acute, I'm pretty sure that I can remember walking past it every day on my way to the university.

I've saved the worst for last. As I have noted in previous entries, the very first fountain pen that I acquired was a Parker 61 that my maternal grandfather left for me when he died in 1974. His wish, I was later told, was that I should take the 61 with me when I went to university. (He didn't say 'if', apparently, even though no one in the family had ever made it as far as higher education; he must have seen the con artist coming.) The pen sat in its box gathering dust until I was packing my belongings for the move to university accommodation. I decided at this point that it would be fitting to ink up the 61 and take it with me. The only problem was that I couldn't work out how to operate the rather unusual capillary filling mechanism for which 61s are famous. In search of advice, I walked down to the stationery shop that had been run in my hometown by two eccentric brothers since the 1940s.

To step into that store was to step back in time. My grandmother, who lived in the town from 1906 until her death in 1996, told me that the establishment looked exactly the same in 1990 as it did in 1945. I explained to one of the brothers that I was having some trouble filling an old fountain pen, and I handed over my Parker. 'Oh, a 61!', he exclaimed. 'I remember when only officers had these.' He proceeded to talk to me about the history of fountain pens, and only got around to telling me how to fill a 61 after about fifteen minutes.

I have no doubt that I found the monologue boring at the time, and my glazed eyes probably wandered to the shelves that were, I believe, stacked with dusty boxes of ink. But I'd give anything now to be able to go back and spend a whole afternoon talking about fountain pens and ink with the owner of the magical shop. Sadly, though, it closed not long after I moved away from the town, and both of the brothers are now dead.

For a long time I took no interest in ink; now I'm in search of lost tines.

Ink in use today: Herbin Poussière de Lune.

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PS: As Ink Quest is now almost as long as Proust's In Search of Lost Time, I have changed the settings to show just the fifty most recent entries on the front page. The older posts are still there, but you'll need to follow the archive links on the right to access them.

Magnificent Obsession

I'm obsessed by being obsessed.

I seem to have spent much of the week thinking, talking, and reading about the very phenomenon of obsession. Honorary Penquod crew member Arty and I went to see Wim Wenders' Alice in the Cities at Chapter on Wednesday evening, and we found ourselves talking about obsessive interests over our customary pre-film coffee. Arty, who's currently going through a jazz and Paul Auster phase, remarked that he tends to fixate on an author, a director, or a musician for a while, obsessively explore his or her work, and then find himself drawn to another object of desire. The original obsession, he stressed, doesn't ever go away, but its intensity fades a little in the light of the newer fascination.

It probably comes as no surprise that I, the author of a long-running blog devoted to the search for the perfect ink, have obsessive tendencies. (The Inkette, a teacher of children with autism, is constantly throwing diagnostic glances and sighs in my direction.) I'm not ashamed of this; on the contrary, I think that life would be extremely boring without obsessions, and I, quite frankly, find anyone who doesn't have at least one all-consuming obsession abnormal and unfit to take up his or her place outside society.

Ink fact, I find the entire phenomenon of obsession obsessively interesting. Even if I don't share another person's fascination, I'm always intrigued to hear him or her talk or write about it. Yesterday afternoon, for example, I started to read Birders, Mark Cocker's account of his obsession with birding. (He prefers not to use the term 'bird-watching', and he believes that anyone who refers to the non-hyphenated 'bird watching' 'ought to face legal action'.) I have no interest whatever in birds -- living just a few minutes' walk from the sea, I tend to find the scavenging and screaming of seagulls nothing but a nuisance -- and I know that Cocker's book will not transform me into a birder. But I am loving reading about the obsession itself, about the rituals, the networks, the anxieties, and the overwhelming restlessness of the fascination. (It helps, perhaps, that, like many ink and pen lovers, he's obsessed by notebooks, more specifically the Alwych, with its trusty 'All-Weather Cover'. He tells us that he, like many other birders, bemoans the decline in quality of these notebooks, but that he was still driven to buy ten of them when he became nervous that the company was going to stop manufacturing the books altogether. Another birder, he continues, has taken the neurosis to even higher levels: when preparing to make another journey to study birds in Thailand, Richard Campey decided that it would be good to take along his Alwych archive from the earlier expeditions, but 'didn't dare expose them to the unforeseen danger of a fresh journey'. His obsessively brilliant -- or brilliantly obsessive -- solution was to photocopy all of his notes from the previous voyages and paste them into a new notebook. These duplicates took up so much room, reports Cocker, that Campey had little room for jotting down new observations.)

This week of obsession sessions has led me to wonder where the line lies between a mere interest and an obsession. Many people would admit to having 'interests' (in sport, music, or politics, for instance), but I suspect that far fewer would be happy to have these labelled as obsessions. What, then, is the difference? I have given this extensive, obsessive thought, and I think that the answer might lie, as so often, in etymology. At the root of 'obsession' sits sitting (sedere), so perhaps an obsession, unlike a casual interest, is something that sits in permanent session upon the shoulder of its owner, constantly whispering in his or her ear, endlessly directing his or her eyes in certain obsession-related directions. This, at least, is how it works for me: my inkthusiasm is always there, always active, always ready, no matter what else is happening. (In the light of Harold Bloom's famous book about how earlier texts peer over the shoulder of the writer, perhaps this blog should be renamed The Anxiety of Inkfluence.)

I've also been thinking about Arty's comment concerning how new obsessions nudge older enthusiasms into the background. And I've been considering this phenomenon because I can sense a new obsession growing. One of the reasons that I became fascinated by inks and pens, I think, is that my job requires me to spend a great deal of time writing. As I may have related in one of the roughly 250 previous posts -- I can no longer remember what I have and have not said -- the first non-standard ink that I bought was a brown from a little (and now defunct) shop in Bath called Papyrus. I found myself in Papyrus looking for an unusual ink because I had spent the earlier part of the day at home, desperately trying to convince myself to write yet another page of an academic book that no one would ever read. If I change the colour of my words, ran my logic, perhaps I will be encouraged to create more of them. It worked: I wrote that afternoon like a man possessed, instantly became obsessed by brown ink, and watched in amazement as that soon mutated into the fascination that motivates Ink Quest.

My inkthusiasm, that is to say, emerged from a certain sense of boredom: I had started to find the basic physical process of writing boring, but I had to go on writing because my job depended -- and still depends -- upon it. (How many more times will Beckett's 'I can't go on, I'll go on' perfectly name the moment?)

Another fundamental daily activity that has always bored me is shaving. It has to be done -- like Frank Constanza with tinsel, I feel beards to be 'distracting' -- but I find the ritual of removing facial hair a terrible chore. Perhaps I should say 'found' instead of 'find', though, because I have discovered, thanks to a passing reference made in one of the non-ink-related threads of the Fountain Pen Network, a truly obsessive forum, Badger and Blade, devoted to the art of wet shaving.

I initially browsed through some of the messages posted there because the level of the forum members' obsession is truly staggering. Who knew, for instance, that there were so many different types of -- and so many different things to say about -- shaving creams or razors? And who knew that shaving is an activity with a rich and extensive vocabulary of its own? (It took me a while to figure out that the 'badger' referred to in the name of the forum is actually the brush used to produce and apply the lather.)

But that initial distant interest soon became something else, for I slowly realized that shaving need not be a chore. The more I read, the more I realized that I have always found the activity boring because I have not been doing it properly, or with the right equipment. And so, in an attempt to transform this essential daily ritual into something more interesting, I studied the discussions at Badger and Blade until I was ready to make the leap. An email to Truefitt and Hill requesting samples produced, two days later, an envelope containing a small sachet of Ultimate Shaving Cream. Carefully following the tips provided on Badger and Blade, I whisked up the lather in a bowl and applied it to my face. To my amazement, the blade glided across with a smoothness that I could never have imagined. (I was reminded, ink fact, of the first time I wrote with an immaculate Stipula italic nib.) My habitual boredom was nowhere to be found. A new world had opened up before my cheeks. The chore-ic had become auric.

I have since purchased an entire tub of Truefitt and Hill cream, and my birthday present will consist of various other pieces of luxury shaving paraphernalia (a metal stand and bowl, a mock ivory razor, and an imitation badger brush; I know that real badger hair is the only thing that a purist will use, but I drew the line there). Have blades cut ink out of the picture, then? Is this the end of my obsession with ink? Will Ink Quest be renamed Shave Quest?

Don't get yourselves in a lather, dear readers. While I have a new obsession, and while it is similarly intended to keep boredom away from a necessary daily ritual, ink still cuts deepest. While I'm finding the details of Badger and Blade fascinating, and while I have no doubt that Truefitt and Hill products will change my life forever, I have a slight anxiety that things could veer too far into traditional boys' territory. In the end, to give that wonderful old Cole Porter song an inky twist, my heart belongs to ink. Ink Quest, you might say, came within a whisker of disappearing, but in the end it was merely a close shave.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Standard Brown. (Could this colour, generously donated to me by honorary Penquod crew member Anna, be on the verge of replacing Noodler's Walnut as one of my very favourite browns? It's almost as dark as Walnut, if a little redder, but it flows much better.)

Shaving/grooming products in use today: Truefitt and Hill Ultimate Shaving Cream; Clinique Oil Control Hydrator; Acqua di Parma cologne; Body Shop lip balm. (See what I mean about not being able to muscle in on traditional boys' turf?)

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PS: I cannot end today's rather long entry without marking my deep sadness at the passing of Humphrey Lyttleton, presenter of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (no comma, it seems), the greatest radio show of our times, since 1972. I was always struck by how he had been chairing the peerless 'antidote to panel games' for almost as long as I have existed; he presented his jazz show for even longer. Radio will never be the same (or quite so filled with scandalous innuendoes) again.

20k

Start popping those corks: Ink Quest has just welcomed visitor number 20,000 through its inky doors.

As usual, the silver lining comes with a cloud. The individual who tipped the site counter over from 19,999 was not actually looking for a dazzling blog about ink; s/he was brought here when s/he typed the phrase 'mob phones slim ones pay as you go argos' into Google. (Argos, for the benefit of non-UK-based readers, is a national chain of cut-price warehouse-style stores for home goods.) Ink fact, quite a few of the visitors to this site come here by accident and stay no more than a few seconds (the fools!). Many have entered 'How do I remove biro from a cheque?' into a search engine, and quite a few appear to be looking for places to buy a thurible. I have yet to discover a reader who has typed 'That debonaire, witty blog about ink' into Google. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Standard Brown (a magnificent colour received in a vial yesterday from Seattle-based honorary Penquod crew member Anna, who also included several samples of truly intoxicating coffee beans, which have lent the ink a delightful scent of espresso.)

Room for improvement (5, 2, 6)

Could do better.

This phrase often appeared upon termly reports during my 'difficult' years at comprehensive school. Actually, things regularly got worse than that: an English teacher once declared that my only hope for the future was to 'become a stand-up comedian', and P.E. tutors found endlessly inventive ways to call me a 'nancy boy' in a politically correct manner. (I fully accept that I earned the label in question: I remembered last week, not long after I'd bumped into the daughter of one of my former P.E. teachers, that I had once, exploiting an unwritten rule that allowed older, less rugged pupils to 'revise' instead of playing rough games in the mud, loudly declared that I was 'going to the library to read Cocteau' when it was suggested that I get changed for rugby.)

'Could do better' returned to haunt me this week, dear readers, when I found myself comparing Ink Quest to a truly heroic blog brought to my attention by Nixon, old friend and erstwhile champion of the Lamy Safari. The site in question belongs to the Typo Eradication Advancement League, and it details how the League is currently touring North America, correcting errors on signs in public places with its trusty Typo Correction Kit as it goes. If you look at the entry for 15 April, for example, you'll see that the author valiantly deletes a rogue 'a' from a sign in a produce market, then whips out a magic marker to transform 'delicous' into 'delicious'.

I raise my hta to this fearless, upstanding organization. From this day forward, I will clothe myself in nothing but their delightful t-shirts, and I shall never again leave the house without my own Typo Correction Kit. Green grocer's of Wales, beware: you're superfluou's apostrophe's are ripe for picking off.

The boldly proactive nature of TEAL has made me realize how much more work Ink Quest has to do if I am to defeat the monster that is the ballpoint pen. I have raged against its plastic hegemony on countless occasions, but what have I actually done to change the biro-filled world into one overflowing with fountain pens and real ink? An emergency meeting has just been held in the war room of the Penquod, and a manifesto has been drawn up. We're still waiting for the ink to dry, though, so I will have to reconstruct it from memory:

- Any handwritten notices produced with a ballpoint pen and displayed in public will be removed, and a team of scribes will create lovingly illuminated replacements in a monastery somewhere in Italy. (I'll be passing The Name of the Rose on to the architects.) There may be a short delay while the new text is prepared.

- Anyone seen using a biro, or merely displaying the cap of one in his/her pockets, in public will have said object removed and stamped upon by tougher members of the crew of the Penquod. (As a sport-fleeing, Cocteau-reading big girl's blouse, I will not, of course, be involved in this side of things.) A fountain pen and a selection of inks will be offered as compensation. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a Bic pen -- forever.

- More ambitiously, a hand-picked team of inkthusiasts will infiltrate ballpoint factories around the world with a view to sabotaging the production of the hideous, tar-like ink. Into the large, bubbling vats of ugliness, these nib-loving moles will slip a secret chemical that will cause ballpoint ink to fade from the page within hours of writing.

This final point of the maninkfesto was inspired by a crossword in the New York Times sent to me by Stefan earlier this week. I never pay any attention to crosswords in newspapers, simply because I can't understand them, but I was bowled over by what I saw for 57 Across in Stefan's scan. As you can see in the image displayed above, dear readers, the line next to '57' is entirely blank. I would have naively assumed that an error had been made during printing, but Stefan cleverly figured things out, as you can see from his handwritten solution: Disappearing ink. Bravo, Stefan! And bravo, author of the crossword, too, for your witty work! (My overly literal, unimaginative mind is constantly amazed by the sheer skill of creating a crossword. I laugh out loud every time I remember the glorious 'Meal for cowardly balloonist [7,2,1,6]' as a clue for 'Chicken in a basket'.)

Ink fact, I wonder if the author of the crossword in question could be convinced to join the crew of the Penquod, as s/he has managed also to sneak in 'INK' as a clue for 17 Across. I will never know how anyone could get from that to 'Cephalopod spray', but Stefan's writing shows that he saw through the cloud of the cuttlefish and swam briskly from enigma to solution. Inkredible work, sir.

But enough about crosswords: there is a battle to fight. It's time to cross swords and utter cross words.

Inks in use today: Rohrer and Klingner Sepia; Noodler's Eternal Brown.

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PS (20 April): Honorary Penquod crew member Anna has emailed to let me know about an intriguing film called Wordplay, which is all about Will Shortz, the crossword editor at the New York Times. The clip available here suggests that this could be one of the finest movies of our times. Could Mr Shortz be the person responsible for the ink-themed puzzle posted above? It seems that Wordplay has not been released on DVD in the UK, but honorary Penquod crew member Arty and I are going to see Alice in the Cities in Chapter this week, so I will be handing in a petition to have Wordplay screened as a thrilling double bill with Helvetica, the film about typefaces championed by Ink Quest some time ago. But should the document be handwritten or typed?

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PS (21 April): Could do a lot better. I spend much of my professional life telling students to read texts closely, but I clearly need to take my own advice, for, as honorary Penquod crew member Anna has pointed out to me, the crossword from the New York Times displayed above very clearly states that its author (or editor, to be more accurate) is the legendary Will Shortz.

Zoosemiotinks

Ink marks the spot.

It's a wandering beast, this thing called ink. It won't stay on its leash, keep to heel. I keep finding references to it in unexpected places, unlikely books and essays. On Wednesday, for inkstance, I sat at my desk to take notes on Thomas A. Sebeok's Perspectives in Zoosemiotics. (Zoosemiotics is, for those unfamiliar with the field, 'devoted to the study of signalling behaviour in and across animal species', to quote Sebeok himself. To put it another way, Sebeok adds, it's what happens when semiotics intersects with ethology.) Not many pages of the intriguing book had passed before I came across a passage in which the author argues that animals use urine in the same way that humans use ink. A cock of the leg, a stroke of the nib -- each marks territory, marks the spot, acts as some kind of memorial or mnemonic. I was here. This is my trace. Minkturation.

I still have about a hundred pages of Perspectives in Zoosemiotics to go, so I don't know if there are more references to ink within its covers. And I don't know if Sebeok, who died a few years ago, was a user of fountain pens. I have my suspicions that he was, for the page on which he likens urine to ink also refers readers to a 1944 article by H.J. Uldall, in which linguists are berated for not paying sufficient attention to -- yes, you guessed it -- ink. I have had a copy of the journal in question retrieved from the dusty, Borgesian depths of the university's library store -- no one has borrowed it since 1972 -- and I will report back as soon as I have had chance to read Uldall's essay.

While I wait for a spare moment to explore these two texts further (these are busy times), I've been thinking about Sebeok's analogy. Has the Inkette been right all along: are all inkthusiasts really piss artists?

Much to my three cats' annoyance, people regularly walk their dogs along the street that runs past Ink Towers. The lamppost that's right outside our gate -- and pictured above -- is watered daily by these creatures; some of those mutts can certainly unleash a fountain. My cats often look on from a position of safety behind the window, and their furry little faces seem to say, 'You dogs -- you're so uncivilized'. (Yes, I know that cats sometimes also mark their territory: one of mine formally declares ownership of her food bowl with a leaf, a clump of moss, or -- her favourite -- an elastic band.) Are those dogs actually signalling solidarity with the inky activities that are taking place within my house while they're urinating? Are they carefully lifting their legs to match the lifting of my hand and pen from the page? If they had opposable thumbs, would they cease spraying and start scribbling? Is Sebeok right about ink and the marking of territory?

I think that he's picked up the scent of something inkteresting. It often feels as if we write for purely practical reasons -- to sign a contract, make a shopping list, or note an appointment in a diary, perhaps -- but perhaps there's more at stake. I've commented in the past upon what Roland Barthes (who, inkidentally, once denounced writing produced with a ballpoint -- le 'style bic' -- as 'pisse copie') had to say about the link between writing and death. As soon as I write something down, notes Barthes, I mark my own death, because those written words, unlike ones produced by my living voice, accrue the power to signify long after I and my voice have expired.

When I leave my inky mark, that is to say, am I not making a potentially immortal monument to my mortal self? These are my words in a world from which I will be gone. (There is, inkidentally, a staggering moment in Chateaubriand's epic Mémoires d'outre-tombe where he writes, in the middle of a lively recollection, quite simply, 'en outre, je suis mort [moreover, I am dead]'. He, of course, is dead -- and he anticipated this as he wrote the story of his life -- but his words remain and continue to mean.) I ink, therefore I once was, once took up space. Dust as wee are...

Ink marking territory today: Rohrer and Klingner Sepia (Stefan, your vial left here on Tuesday); Noodler's Eternal Brown.

Inkwa

I hereby pronounce an inkwa upon Nick Hornby.

As we were driving to the beach in Mumbles this morning, we happened to hear the popular novelist in question being interviewed on the radio. He was asked at one point about his writing habits, and he explained that he happily uses a word processor to produce his books. He then went on to mock writers who celebrate archaic writing instruments when talking about the mysteries of their craft. Open any newspaper's arts supplement, he claimed, and you'll find 'some twerp with a quill'.

I am not a user of quills, but I do take offence at Hornby's implicit attack upon ink. Ink fact, he had, when deifying his computer, added that getting rid of his old manual typewriter some years ago was a great leap forward. This, I can only assume, is because the latter machine uses ink to form words, whereas a word processor is nothing but sunshine and shadows.

In the face of such anti-ink sentiments, I have little choice but to issue my inkwa. Let me be perfectly clear, though: unlike a fatwa, an inkwa involves absolutely no threat of violence; it is, rather, a secular, peaceful -- yet irritated -- affair. I wish no harm upon the author, and I am not inkviting inkthusiasts of the world to do anything rash. The pen, as we know so well, is mightier (and prettier) than the sword.

What, then, does an inkwa involve? I have spent the day meditating in front of a bottle of ink for inkspiration, and I finally have an answer. The inkwa against the inkfidel will advance on two fronts:

1. Inkthusiasts must solemnly swear to dispose of any books by Nick Hornby that happen to be upon their shelves. Don't start burning them in public, though; just donate them to a charity shop or some other worthy cause. (Do you see how polite and civilised an inkwa is?)

2. The Penquod will immediately start recruiting a team of dedicated calligraphers to produce an elegant illuminated manuscript of Hornby's entire oeuvre. (News reports about the hand-produced version of the Bible submitted to the Pope yesterday were clearly on my mind when I formulated this point. Even though I have an aversion to all holy books, I was stunned by the beauty of this object. Because the calligrapher in charge of the project is based in Monmouthshire, BBC Wales ran a special feature as part of the television news last night, in which there was some glorious footage of the scribes at work.) This will not be undertaken in the name of devotion or (high) fidelity; it's purely a fever-pitched work of spite. I want to be there when the inkfidel is presented with the ink-drenched, word-processor-untouched rendering of his oeuvre. I have no doubt that he will feel as I would if someone transcribed the whole of Ink Quest in ballpoint pen and handed it to me.

I did have a third line of attack, but I've ruled it out because it wanders too far from the peaceful spirit of the inkwa. When I was browsing in Troutmark, Cardiff's finest secondhand bookshop, earlier in the week, I came across an anthology of Chinese fables and folktales entitled Smearing the Ghost's Face with Ink, published in paperback by Picador in 1982. I know absolutely nothing about Chinese folklore; it was simply the title on the spine of the book that caught my inkuisitive eye. Inspecting the table of contents, I noticed that the title of the volume was taken from one of the tales contained within, so I rushed to the till, handed over £2.50, and raced home to read the fable in question (which is extracted from Chi Yun's Notes of the Yueh-wei Hermitage).

The story relates the encounter between an old scholar and the ghost of a woman who had once been a maid-servant in the house where the scholar happens to be staying. We're told that 'brushes, ink-stone and books' have been laid out in his room for him to use. When the spectre appears, the man, who is in the middle of writing a letter, recognizes at once that she is not a living being. Instead of being frightened, however, he merely asks her to trim the wick of the lamp. When she puts out the light, he becomes angry, rubs his fingers in the ink, and slaps her face, leaving smears on both of her cheeks. From this point on, we're inkformed, the ghost 'would cover its face with its hands and flee' whenever it met members of the household. 'Once they managed to look at it closely', the tale concludes, 'and saw that its face was still smeared with ink.'

This wonderful little fable led me to wonder for a few moments this morning if Hornby the inkfidel should have ink smeared upon his face. But I fear that such an action would be far too violent to remain within the terms of the non-aggressive inkwa. Let inkthusiasts of the world, though wounded by Hornby's words, not be drawn into such activities. There's enough killing in the world; let's focus instead upon quilling.

Inks smeared on face today: Noodler's Violet; Noodler's Sequoia.

Québécriture

The Penquod has returned from its voyage to Montréal, dear readers, and my hands have thawed enough to allow me to type. I hereby present you with ink-related extracts from my travel diary.

Wednesday 26 March

I have arrived at the terminal that time forgot. As I noted in an earlier entry, I leave for Canada from Terminal 4 of Heathrow airport. While I was fully aware before today that Terminal 5 is -- disasters aside -- the hot young thing, I hadn't realized until now that Terminal 4 is evidently destined for oblivion. When I get onto the Heathrow coach at Cardiff bus station early in the morning, I ask the driver if we'll actually be stopping outside Terminal 4. He tells me that it's my lucky day: 26 March is the last date on which National Express services will go there. From tomorrow onwards, it's just Heathrow Central and -- you guessed it -- Terminal 5.

The old terminal's destiny becomes even more apparent when I make my way through to the departure lounge. As anyone who's ever flown from Terminal 4 will probably remember, the long strip of airside shops offers plenty of opportunities for gazing at, and possibly even indulging in, a wide range of luxury goods. I have passed many an hour there looking at watches that I will never be able to afford, Smythson trinkets, cufflinks, and, of course, ink in The Pen Shop. Today, however, things are not looking good. Presumably because Terminal 5 starts receiving passengers tomorrow, several of the shops at Terminal 4 have closed, and I find the staff of Smythson busy packing the store's contents into cardboard boxes. Meanwhile, the restaurant where I have lunch is hours away from shutting its doors for the final time.

Inkthusiasts will be pleased to learn, however, that The Pen Shop appears to be standing its ground in the middle of the waning wasteland. As I make my way to the departure gate in the middle of the afternoon, it is still open for business, fully stocked, and showing no signs of a Smythson-like disappearance into a series of boxes.

I wonder for a moment during the flight if one of the stewardesses is a fan of fountain pens, for when I try to return to her the ballpoint that I'd borrowed to complete my landing card for the Canadian authorities, she scowls and tells me that I can keep it. Is she trapped in a profession where using a fountain pen is agonizingly difficult? (A pristine British Airways uniform ruined by an ink stain caused by a high-altitude leak wouldn't look good, would it?) Or is she, aware of my global inkfamy as the author of this blog, just trying to annoy me? (Infamy, infamy ... they've all got it in for me.) Is there a note written in biro alongside my name on the passengers' manifest? Persecute.

As the plane descends into Montréal, there are 'Oooh!'s and 'Aaah!'s from some of the passengers as they catch sight of the beautiful snow-covered landscape. I, however, immediately start to worry about the tin of Herbin ink cartridges stored in my suitcase. The captain announces that it's close to freezing on the ground, but that the wind will make it feel well into the minus figures. Will my ink freeze as it makes its way across the tarmac to the baggage reclaim area? I have wrapped the tin in two plastic bags and surrounded it with clothing for extra warmth, but have I done enough?

As soon as I arrive at the hotel, I tear open the bags and unscrew the lid of the Herbin container, expecting the worst. ('It's doom alone that counts', to repeat a Bob Dylan line that I've probably quoted here in the past.) There has, however, been a post-Easter miracle: the cartridges are inktact and untroubled. The French writing on the label makes them look perfectly at home here in Québec.

But I always need something to be anxious about, so my thoughts soon turn to tomorrow morning, when I have some time to explore the city (and, of course, its pen shops) before the beginning of the conference that has brought me to Canada. Will wandering around in icy weather with my pen in my case be inkviting disaster? Will the ink freeze and ruin my faithful Visconti Van Gogh while I'm out and about? Would I be better off carrying the pen in my inside pocket, where the heat of my body will presumably warm the ink?

I consider ringing the concièrge for advice. The hotel evidently wishes to help its guests survive the cruel Montréal weather, as a large, heavy-duty umbrella has been hung on the clothes rail in my room. I'm reminded of the following exchange in Dostoyevsky's The Devils:

'Every man has a right to an umbrella.'
'You've defined the minimum of human rights in one short sentence, sir.'

I decide not to bother the concièrge, though, because another moment in The Devils makes me realize that the hospitality industry in pre-revolutionary Russia was clearly far more advanced than its modern Western incarnation. There's a short scene about half way through the long (and almost impossibly dense) novel where several of the key characters come across an inn where a guest has just committed suicide. We're told by the narrator that, not long before taking his life, the man had ordered from the establishment's employees 'a cutlet, a bottle of Château d'Yquem, and some grapes, paper, ink, and his bill'. I check the room service menu that has been placed in my room, and there's no mention whatever of ink. How far we have fallen since Dostoyevsky's time! I fall asleep and dream of a secret society devoted to radinkal revolutionary activities. We will rival the Gideons by leaving a bottle of ink in each of the world's hotel rooms.

Thursday 27 March

My poor body has no idea what time it is. It awakes at 3.30am, and it's convinced that it's time to get up. I persuade it to go back to sleep until 7.30am, by which time it's started to snow. I steel myself with several cups of coffee and take to the streets in search of ink.

It turns out that I have been worrying unnecessarily about freezing to death during my time in Montréal, as -11º doesn't feel quite as cold as I had anticipated. And getting around isn't at all difficult: while there is, as the first image displayed above shows, a lot of snow about, the main streets and the pavements (in the British sense of the term) are largely clear. Québec clearly knows how to live with snow. I mentally compare this efficiency with the British approach to adverse weather conditions, whereby half a centimetre of slush brings the entire nation to its knees for weeks. Bread becomes a precious commodity. Comparisons are made to the 'big freeze' of 1948, when an inch fell within the space of thirty days.

As I stroll towards the shops, my mind drifts back to the very first Ink Quest entry, in which I discussed getting to know foreign cities by searching for ink. My route through Montréal today introduces me to the delights of this wonderful town in precisely this manner. How many places exist in my memories as little more than buildings and streets clustered coincidentally around pen shops?

First stop is Stylo.ca, which is located deep in one of the city's labyrinthine subterranean shopping complexes, and which can be glimpsed in the second image posted above. I am greeted by numerous cabinets of delightful pens -- Omas, Aurora, Conklin, Taccia, Visconti, and Pelikan, to name just a few of the brands on display -- some of which I'm encountering for the first time in the flesh. I ask the manager of the shop if he has any Noodler's inks, and he tells me that I have come at just the right time: a new shipment has recently arrived. I'm looking for a bottle of Standard Brown, but this shade isn't in stock, so I settle instead for a bottle of Violet. I consider also investing in some Bay State Blue, the somewhat controversial new colour from Noodler's, but I change my mind at the last minute. I quite like what I've seen of the ink in a letter or two from honorary Penquod crew member Anna, but some members of the Fountain Pen Network have reported problems, so I'm a little uneasy. While Ink Quest isn't really in the business of reviewing the world's pen shops -- inkthusiasts already have Glenn Marcus' excellent website for that -- I can't conclude my account of visiting Stylo.ca without commenting upon how welcoming and helpful the manager was. He endured my broken, twisted French, waited patiently while I looked through the various inks on offer, and generally made the entire experience a complete pleasure. Bravo, monsieur!

Leaving the warmth of the underworld, I carry on along the chilly Rue Saint Catherine and turn onto Rue Union, where I soon find La Maison du Stylo, a small, long-established, well-stocked shop that, in addition to selling pens and inks, stocks some lovely stationery (inkluding my beloved Clairefontaine). The selection of inks is perfectly respectable -- Herbin, Pelikan, and so on -- but nothing grabs my eye, so I leave empty-handed. I take a photograph of the store from across the street, but I later discover that it's too dark and blurry to display here.

I then wander all the way over to Vieux Montréal, stopping only for an espresso and an almond croissant en route. Actually, that's not quite correct: I initially walk something like a mile straight past Vieux Montréal, get completely lost, and only realize that I need to turn back when I find myself approaching an extremely busy freeway. Fearing that I am about to be arrested for jaywalking into Vermont or New York State, I check my map, realize that the Penquod has significantly overshot, and make my way back to the historic part of Montréal. In one of the charming little streets, I find Papetière Casse-Noisette (pictured in the third image above), which is, as its name suggests, more about paper than pens. But paper is useless without ink, of course, so the shop also sells a few brands of the sacred substance. (I definitely remember seeing Herbin, and I think I also caught sight of Pelikan.) I'm extremely tempted to stock up on some of the tantalizing writing paper on display, but the varieties that catch my eye are all European, so it's just as easy to wait until I get home.

One of the unwritten rules of the Penquod, ink fact, is that, wherever possible, items purchased while abroad should not be things that are readily available at home. Why travel half way around the world to buy a bottle that I would commonly see on a shelf of a British retailer? This is precisely why I was so excited to see Noodler's boxes stacked up in Stylo.ca this morning: to the best of my knowledge, there's not a single shop in Europe that sells the brand. (I'm excluding online, virtual outlets, of course.) Perhaps, then, Montréal, with its abundance of Herbin, has a few too many traces of Europe for this to be a wholly exotic visit.

Saturday 29 March

Paris Hilton is in town. That's the rumour, anyway, according to two shop assistants whose conversation I overhear in Chapters book store. She is, they claim, 'here to sign shoes'. They don't say whether or not she'll be using a fountain pen.

I'm back on the streets with other things in mind, however. The conference is over, and I've said farewell to the Canadian friends whom I haven't seen for eight years, so the Penquod is once again free to trawl. Flicking through the Yellow Pages in my hotel room last night -- never let it be said that I don't know how to live life to the full -- I spotted a reference to a pen shop that's not on my list: Vasco. (Full marks to Montréal, inkidentally, for having entire section of the directory in question devoted to 'Stylos'.) A glance at my map reveals that it's very close to the university, so I head back down to Rue Saint Catherine as soon as work is over. Vasco, it transpires, is essentially a cigar store, but there are also several cabinets of beautiful pens (Omas, Visconti, Pelikan, and so on). A $975 Omas winks seductively at me from behind the glass, and I wonder why pens don't come with government health warnings on the boxes. (Danger! Writing instruments are ten times more addictive than tobacco.) I somehow tear myself away and look around for ink. I can't see any on display, and the assistants are all busy, so I slip back out onto the pavement (well, sidewalk), where the wind, apparently, is making the temperature feel like -12º. I realize that my pen and spare cartridges are in my case, which is swinging casually from my shoulder. Scared that they will freeze, I slip them into my inside pocket to keep mes petits enfants warm.

A little further along Saint Catherine, I call into the extremely swish Ogilvy department store. If one of the Penquod's unwritten rules concerns the purchase of exotic inks, its first written-in-stone-for-fear-of-death edict is that foreign journeys involve the purchase of gifts for the Inkette and Baby Ink. (They have a special deal with UK border control, and my failure to declare anything shockingly expensive leads to instant inkarceration.) In the basement of Ogilvy, I discover another unexpected pen retailer: Essence du Papier. I was aware, thanks to Glenn Marcus' website, that branches of this shop exist elsewhere in the city, but I knew nothing about this particular gem. As in Papetière Casse-Noisette, there's a delightful selection of paper on the shelves, but there are also many glorious pens on display (Visconti, Cartier, Caran d'Ache, Pelikan, and so on). A little ink stand features the ubiquitous Herbin, in both bottles and cartridges, along with the Caran d'Ache 'Colours of the Earth' range. Remembering that I have run out of Herbin Gris Nuage, I come very close to buying a bottle, but then remember the unwritten rule and move on with empty hands that yearn only for Private Reserve, Noodler's, and other inks of non-European origink. It seems that I am destined to sail home from Canada with just one new colour in the hold of the Penquod.

The afternoon's wanderings come to a very special end. Longtime readers of this blog will know that honorary Penquod crew member Stefan has been a constant and central cast figure in the ongoing soap opera/melodrama/farce that is Ink Quest. We've exchanged many letters and probably hundreds of emails over the last few years, but we've never met or even spoken to each other. The friendship, that is to say, has been confined to ink and type. When I first learned that I would be spending several days in Montréal, I planned to take a detour via New York on the way home, meet up with Stefan, chew the ink, and soak up the city's many Edward Hopper paintings. This proved impossible, but Stefan came up with the brilliant idea that, as we would be within the same time zone for the first time since our friendship began, we should at least talk to each other on the telephone.

So, from a payphone somewhere in another one of Montréal's underground complexes, the historic link-up is made. We spend something like half and hour, possibly even forty-five minutes, discussing ink, pens, and whatever else comes to mind. It's not often that I get the chance actually to talk about ink at great length with anyone, so this is something of a novelty, and my profound dislike of speaking on the telephone seems miraculously to suspend itself for the duration of the call. I, moreover, have the luxury of talking to Stefan from a secluded, untraceable public phone, with no Inkette to sigh and pull faces from the other side of the room. Even with the background noise in the shopping centre, I'm fairly sure that I can hear at the other end of the phone the distinct sound of Mrs Stefan rolling her eyes at the content of our conversation. Stefan -- it was a (Mont)real pleasure speakink to you. I have a feelink that I'll be calling 1-800-INK again in the future.

Ink of non-European heritage in use today: Noodler's Violet (a lovely, rich colour that strikes me as what could happen if Noodler's Nightshade shook off its melancholia and smiled a bit).