Licence to Ink

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.

'En(cre) abîme' en abîme

En(cre) abîme

Sans script

I was too Sans-guine.

Honorary Penquod crew member Stefan has emailed to let me know that he cannot see Ink Quest in its new Gill Sans form, presumably because he does not have the typeface installed on his machine. Because I hate the thought of Ink Quest's devoted legion of readers not being able to see what I can see, today's brief post comes with a snapshot of what appears on my screen when I look at yesterday's entry. As I said in the previous post, if you are currently sans Sans, I suggest that you become avec son Sans sans délai.

Ink in use today: Private Reserve Chocolat.

Type-ology

From Inkface to Typeface.

You have probably already noticed, dear readers, that Ink Quest looks a little different. After posting the previous entry about the phenomenon of Inkface, I noticed that it is possible to alter the template provided by Blogger for my inky ramblings. Most of the code was completely impenetrable to me, but I did spot the names of typefaces lurking deep inside the labyrinth, so I bravely decided to make some changes.

Longtime readers of Ink Quest will perhaps be a little surprised to see that I have chosen a sans serif typeface for the makeover, for I have railed against the horrors of Arial and its kind in several previous posts. I do, however, have a weakness for Gill Sans, mainly because of its association with the early Penguin book covers, and so I have now made this the typeface of Ink Quest. (I tried, inkidentally, to use Windsor Light Condensed, the magnificent face associated with the credits of Woody Allen's films, but Blogger would not recognize it. And I've just [6.25pm] learned, thanks to a kind fellow member of the Fountain Pen Network, that you will need Gill Sans on your machine in order to see the blog as I'm seeing it. If you are currently sans Sans, I suggest that you become avec Sans avec vitesse.) While I was up to my neck in HTML code (if that's what it was), I also, after a few false starts, managed to make a few small changes to the right-hand sidebar of the blog. I hope that you like the clean, modernist reinkarnation of Ink Quest, dear readers.

Coinkidentally, we happened to spend yesterday evening watching Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's brilliant film about censorship, corruption, resistance, and betrayal in the final days of the German Democratic Republic. I'm sure that there's a 'human interest' story about a brave Stasi officer in there somewhere, but my inkhuman and misanthropic eye was naturally caught by the significance of typefaces and ink to the plot. I don't want to give too much away, simply because I wouldn't want to ruin the film for any inkthusiasts who have yet to see it, but I can probably reveal without causing too much damage that a typewriter used to produce an article that is critical of the East German regime plays a crucial role in the narrative. The state officials are so outraged by what the anonymous author has said about life to the east of the Wall, ink fact, that they call in an expert to tell them the precise model on which the text was typed. In a wonderful scene, from which the first image displayed above has been taken, the individual in question reels off a list of authors and their typewriters, and then states that the offending machine is registered to no one in East Germany. (While life in the GDR evidently had its drawbacks, it occurred to me that this man had one of the greatest jobs imaginable. Can you imagine being asked at a party, 'What's your line of work?', and being able to reply, 'I report to the Secret Police about typefaces'? As the United Kingdom slips ever closer to the kinds of surveillance and state interference once found in the GDR, ink fact, I may finally have found the new career that I've been restlessly looking for in recent years. As soon as I've finished typing up this entry -- on an untraceable typewriter, of course -- I'll be throwing in the towel and sending my CV to Whitehall and offering to take up the post of Ink Monitor. At the drop of a hat, I will be able to tell MI5 the type of writing instrument and ink used by any one of the citizens of this country. Oh, wait ... as MI5 is already monitoring what's published on Ink Quest, I won't actually need to take the inkitiative; I'll just sit back and wait for the knock at the door in the dead of the night.)

As if this focus on typefaces were not enough, the final minutes of the film use an ink smudge to absolutely stunning effect. I really can't say too much about this inkident, as it would inkevitably spoil the surprise for those who have not seen Das Leben der Anderen. Instead, I simply offer the second image displayed above, and I would like to take this opportunity to praise Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for casting ink in such a crucial role in his film. Ink rarely does well on the casting couch -- look at how Hitchcock's Rebecca quietly erases most of the obsessive references to ink and handwriting found in du Maurier's original novel, for inkstance -- so it's refreshing to see a director who resists typecasting and is not afraid to blot his copybook by casting type.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray; Mont Blanc Racing Green.

Ink desired today: Rohrer and Klingner Scabiosa. Not long after I wrote the words displayed above, the postman delivered a letter from Seattle-based honorary Penquod crew member Anna, in which she proudly showed off her new haul of Scabiosa. It really is a beautiful dusty aubergine shade (I've also seen it described by the author of The Laurel Tree as having an 'understated and subtle lavender-grey hue'), and I will probably have to buy a bottle very soon. The only thing that makes me slightly uneasy, however, is the fact that Scabiosa is an iron gall ink, and I worry about what such a composition would do to my precious pens.

Inkface

In an inky tribute to the brilliant Sleeveface (brought to my attention by honorary Penquod crew member Arty), and in the light of my recent decision to transform my iMac's 'Photo Booth' application into 'Ink Booth', I present you with the above photograph, dear readers. The inkfamy has clearly gone to my head.

Inks in use today: Diamine Saddle Brown; Diamine Indigo.

Fountain-penknife

The knives are out.

A short post by my old friends over at Chimpomatic alerted me on Thursday to the 111th birthday of the endlessly faithful Swiss Army penknife. I have lost count of the number of occasions on which my little red angel has come to my rescue (perhaps predictably, the nail file has seen more action than the screwdriver), and I can't imagine life without it. One thing about the model that I own, however, has always annoyed me slightly: one of its gadgets is a miniature ballpoint pen, which is unveiled and retracted by the sliding of a small grey button. The first photograph displayed above shows the monstrosity primed and ready to leave ugly marks on a piece of paper.

Regular readers of Ink Quest will be familiar with my war against the ballpoint pen, and they will probably be muttering 'Here we go again...' to themselves at this very moment. But it is important that I launch angry words against the object in question today, dear readers, for, as an article in today's Observer newspaper points out, on 15 June 2008 it is precisely 70 years since Lazlo Biro took out a British patent for the vile plastic writing instrument -- I use the term loosely -- that is now often simply known as 'the biro'.

The article also reveals that Argentinian Inventors' Day is celebrated every year on Biro's birthday. (Even though he was originally from Hungary, Lazlo fled to Argentina during the Second World War, and died there in 1985.) With this in mind, and in the light of the proximity of the Swiss Army penknife's birthday, I have chosen to turn 15 June into Fountain-penknife Day. Each year on this date, fountain pen lovers around the world will bombard Victorinox, the company that makes Swiss Army knives, with letters (handwritten in real ink, of course) which demand the introduction of a model that replaces the ballpoint gadget with a real nib. (I've never actually dismantled a Swiss Army knife, partly because I'd probably need its screwdriver to put it back together again, but it looks like there's room inside for a standard-sized ink cartridge, or perhaps even a miniature piston-filling system.)

I have, with wild abandon, even manufactured a prototype, and I will be emailing the second photograph displayed above to Victorinox this afternoon. Before you can say 'knife', I have no doubt that they will recognize the fine craftsmanship (well, some masking tape and a spare Pelikan nib) involved, see the light, cut me a deal and a slice of the action, and rush the Fountain-penknife into production. I have high hopes; this doesn't feel like just a stab in the dark.

Ink in use today: Diamine Sepia.

PS: Ink Quest, as dedicated readers will know, recently marked the sad passing of the unique, heroic Humphrey Lyttleton. While I've been typing up this entry, I've been listening to 'Chairman Humph', a hilarious and moving tribute to him that formed part of Radio 4's 'Humph Sunday'. Before ending, in a beautifully judged moment, with Humph playing 'We'll Meet Again' on his trumpet, the programme reminded us of some of his finest quips (including the unrepeatable one about Lionel Blair and Twelve Angry Men) and, to my surprise, revealed that he had been a dedicated calligrapher. One of the contributors recalled how the signing of an autograph for a fan was no ordinary event, as Humph would always carefully craft a miniature work of art with his pen. We will not see his kind again.

Breathing Ink

What's past is present.

At the very end of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, in what are probably the most powerful and heart-racing pages ever written, the effects of old age catch up with Marcel. His life is aimless, his health has not been good, and he has, above all, still not become a writer. 'I knew myself to be worthless', he recalls. One afternoon, he attends a gathering held by the Prince and Princess de Guermantes, whose name has long held magical connotations for him. On his way to the Guermantes' drawing-room, he is suddenly overcome by 'involuntary memories': an uneven paving stone in the courtyard catapults him back to driving around Balbec, admiring the steeples of Martinville, and dipping a madeleine in herb tea, and a napkin that he uses to wipe his mouth while he waits in the library 'had exactly the same stiffness and the same degree of starch' as one used many years earlier in Balbec.

This re-awakens in him the desire to be a writer: 'the raw material of my experience [...] was to be the raw material of my book', he concludes. When he is finally invited into the drawing-room, however, everything changes. He does not at first recognize the people around him, even though his association with them stretches back many years. The guests, he notes, seem to have disguised themselves, put on make-up, and whitened their hair for the occasion. But Marcel slowly realizes that the people around him have simply grown old; they are no longer the young and beautiful creatures he remembers from his past. In a moving moment, he sees Gilberte's mother in front of him, only to discover that she is actually Gilberte herself, the little girl with whom he played in the Jardin des Champs Élysées as a small boy. Time has caught up with her.

And Marcel, too, for he now realizes that time itself will have to be the subject of the work he will finally write. Not sure if he has long enough left to complete the work, he none the less vows to begin to describe the place of people in time. Marcel has at last achieved his boyhood dream of becoming a writer, and he sets off in search of lost time.

I offer this brief summary of the final volume of Proust's epic because I had a decidedly Marcellian experience on Sunday afternoon. Because it was the Inkette's parents' forty-fifth wedding anniversary, the clan gathered for a celebratory meal at a restaurant in the town where the happy couple live. About half way through lunch, and as I bent down to pick up yet another piece of breadstick that Baby Ink had hurled contemptuously to the ground with a barbaric 'yawp', I caught sight of a few vaguely familiar faces on the other side of the room. I couldn't quite place them at first, though, so I casually took Baby Ink for a toddle past their table so that I could get a closer look.

They appeared upon closer inspection to resemble relatives of mine. More specifically, the woman looked like the daughter of my father's mother's sister. (His cousin, in other words.) The only problem was that the characters at the table seemed far too old to be who I thought they were. I remembered their hair as being dark, but what I saw before me was, as at the gathering attended by Marcel, strikingly white. Their faces and bodies looked too small, moreover. I returned to my seat, convinced that I had made a mistake.

A little later, however, I took Baby Ink outside to the children's play area. As I left the building, I found myself face to face with the people who resembled my relatives. They had moved to a table on the patio so that they could smoke. This time there was no doubt in my mind: these people were definitely part of my extended family. I had initially doubted their identities because I hadn't seen them since my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary party in 1985, and my memories of their appearances were, therefore, nearly a quarter of a century out of date. To be perfectly brutal, time has taken its toll upon them.

And clearly upon me, for they looked decidedly puzzled when I introduced myself. The last time they saw me, I had just entered the terrible teenage years. I can't remember much about the golden wedding celebrations where I last met them, but my guess is that I was probably wearing black, scowling, arguing with my parents, and longing to get home to Albert Camus, the only person who 'understood' me at the time. The individual who stood before them on Sunday, however, was in his late 30s, no longer skinny, and holding a representative of the next generation of Family Ink in his arms. (I did, rest assured, spend much of the rest of the afternoon scowling, arguing with my parents, and longing to get home to Proust, the only person who 'understands' me these days.)

But what does all of this have to do with the quest for the perfect ink?

On the way home from my Proustian encounter, I found myself remembering details of my father's family history. I have discussed in previous Ink Quest posts how my maternal grandfather, who left me a Parker 61 fountain pen when he died, is partly to blame for my obsession with writing instruments. What I haven't mentioned until now, I realized on Sunday, is that my paternal grandfather may well have fostered the accompanying fascination with ink, for he spent much of his life with inky fingers.

Although he had retired by the time I was born, my father's father trained and worked for many years as a printer. I believe that some of the socialist pamphlets produced in the South Wales valleys in the mid-twentieth century and now held in archives bear his name as typesetter and printer, ink fact. Retirement meant selling off most of the equipment associated with the profession, but one room in the tiny terraced house in which my grandparents lived when I was a child contained a small press and several trays of type. While I was not allowed to play with the machine, I do have vague memories of watching my grandfather set text and magically roll off a sheet of printed paper. What I remember with total clarity, however, is the smell of the room. Ink filled the air, and its scent even managed to squeeze under the door and out into the hallway.

Whenever I visited my grandparents, that is to say, I was breathing ink. Each time I filled my lungs, I would take in the heavenly scent that now leads me, albeit in a slightly different form, around the world in search of the perfect colour with which to write. (I'll conveniently ignore the Health and Safety issues involved in allowing a small child to inhale potent chemicals, I think. It was the 1970s -- asbestos was all the rage.)

With one grandfather giving me a Parker 61, and the other encouraging me to inkhale ink, it's little wonder that I grew up into the author of this blog. Petit Marcel had Balbec, the Jardin des Champs Élysées, and madeleines; I had the South Wales valleys, a beautiful fountain pen, and ink for air. He made Time the subject of his work; I have made ink the spur of mine. He was à la recherche du temps perdu; I am eternally à la recherche du ton perdu.

Ink being inhaled today: Private Reserve Chocolat; Diamine Indigo.

Inkquisitive

iSpy with my little iMac...

These words are brought to you courtesy of a new iMac, dear readers, for it transpired that the motherboard on my old model had died. Having suffered this catastrophe and a failed internal power supply within the space of three years, I briefly considered leaving the immaculate white church of Apple and replacing the defunct iMac with a cheap, ugly PC. Two weeks of working with ('against' would be more accurate) Windows on a borrowed laptop, however, caused me so many headaches that I soon realized I can never now turn my back on the elegant ease of OS.

Because three years have passed since I bought my last Apple, things have changed a little, and I'm still getting used to the new features and the redesigned keyboard. What's really unsettling me, though, is the little camera located above the screen. I know that this is intended to be used for video chatting, but I can't help feeling that I'm being watched while I type. The box in which my computer came tells me that it was 'Designed by Apple in California', but should the words 'according to the principles of Nineteen Eighty-Four have been added to the end of that sentence? I already know that the world is conspiring against me, but is it also now scrutinizing my every move? Am I, as I type these very words, being beamed to a secret monitor in a bunker owned by the Bic ballpoint company? Should I change my name to Inkston Smith and confess that I love Bic Brother?

Before he is defeated by Big Brother, Winston Smith tries to fight against the system. I am valiantly doing the same, dear readers. One of the truly disturbing features added to iMacs since I bought my last machine is a piece of software called Photo Booth. As its name suggests, the program uses the built-in camera to display upon the screen the face of the person sitting at the keyboard. When a red button is pressed, a countdown begins. After three beeps, just like in one of those passport photo booths, a snapshot is taken. Because there is a slight delay on the image, however, it's possible to see yourself blinking and even to watch your own eyes following themselves. Time slips slightly out of joint; you see yourself seeing yourself trying to catch up with the sight of yourself. (Old friend and erstwhile Lamy Safari champion Nixon will probably remember seeing a stunning video art installation in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with me about fifteen years ago, in which a much longer delay was introduced between two cameras positioned across the room from each other. As I remember it, by the time the viewer got to the second camera and looked at the screen next to it, he or she would catch sight of himself walking away from the first camera. We must have walked around in circles for about half an hour, endlessly chasing images of ourselves. I only wish that I could remember the name of the artist responsible for this dizzying work.)

But what does this have to do with ink and pens? Well, dear readers, I have rebelliously renamed Photo Booth. It is now known as Ink Booth, and it will be used, as above, to show the world the pen(s) and ink(s) in use in the study of Ink Towers at any given moment. The inquisitive little eye that watches my every move has been transformed into an inkstrument of inkquisition. I will need, clearly, to perfect my technique -- annoyingly, the camera is fixed to focus upon the face; doesn't the Apple corporation understand that what people are holding in their hands is much more important than the human visage? -- and work out an easier way to hold up my writing instrument and bottle and simultaneously press the button on the mouse, but the photograph none the less allows you to see that I am using my Stipula I Castoni fountain pen and Visconti Sepia ink today. (I haven't used the colour in question for a long time, but a recent conversation with honorary Penquod crew member Stefan, who has fallen in love with Visconti Blue, has led me back to the most striking bottle in inkdom.)

Ink Quest: putting the graph back in photograph.

Ink in use today: Use your eyes.