Solid Senders

It's been a day of solid support.

I can always rely on the readers of Ink Quest to help me out when my quest for the perfect ink or some related object of desire encounters a hitch. I suspected, then, that it wouldn't take long for yesterday's wonderings about a 'solid-ink pencil' to bring in responses from other inkthusiasts.

Within hours, honorary Penquod crew member Ken had been in touch to say that 'ink pencil', when entered into Google, led to (if I may quote his words) 'a few exemplars of a solid basis indelible ink, roughly diameter 1.5 mm. Not quite a grease or china marker, but solid ink'. And when I woke up this morning, I found an email from another honorary Penquod crew member in my inbox. I don't think that I've ever given him a pseudonym, so let's call him Guido, shall we, dear readers? Guido's email contained a link to an object called the Sanford NOBLOT indelible ink pencil.

'Inkreka!', I cried as I studied the webpage, for it seems to me that this must be what W.G. Sebald's character means by a 'solid-ink pencil'. Even if it isn't, the NOBLOT is an inktriguing object, and I will be tracking one down at the earliest possible opportunity.

Or will I? I'm sure that many inkthusiasts will already have noted that the NOBLOT is made by the giant company that is responsible for filling the world with countless monstrous rollerballs and ballpoint pens. Yes, Sanford also now owns Parker and Waterman, two long-established makers of fountain pens, but is there a single inkthusiast out there who believes that the quality of Parker and Waterman pens is higher now than it was in the pre-Sanford days?

Ink other words, I will need to tread carefully, for the NOBLOT could all too easily -- no! -- blot my copybook. Indelibly.

All that remains today, then, in this brief postscript, is for me to thank the generous and inkquisitive readers of this blog who sprang into action as soon as I wrote the words 'solid-ink pen'. For sending in solidarity news of solidity, you're solid senders. I don't know exactly what a 'solid sender' is, but it seems to be a positive thing in songs by Little Richard, John Lee Hooker, and Van Morrison. 'Solid sender' rhymes with 'surrender' in Little Richard's "Slippin' and a Slidin'", moreover, and 'surrender' ultimately has its roots in giving. Solid senders, then, are solid givers. Indelibly.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Eternal Brown; Pelikan Blue; Noodler's Nightshade.

Solid, Us?

Ink Quest: now in stereo.

I'm not referring to some bizarre modern attempt to turn this blog into a podcast, dear readers; Ink Quest will always be written words about the written word. I am, rather, alluding to the roots of the term 'stereo' in the Greek 'stereos', which means 'solid', for I find myself today in pursuit of a new object of desire, a solid object of desire.

My latest inkthusiasm emerged out of the blue last night when I was reading W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz. Not too far from the beginning of the book, the mysterious Jacques Austerlitz begins to tell the narrator the story of his life. As he recounts a period spent in my native Wales, he describes how a Calvinist preacher named Emyr Elias kept a written record of his sermons in a grey notebook. At the back of the book, we're told, Elias stored a 'thin solid-ink pencil', which he would moisten with his tongue before beginning to write.

I stopped reading at this point, and not just because Austerlitz's account of the sanctimonious Emyr Elias reminded me of everything that I hate about the land of my birth, everything that led me to run to the other side of the Wye and then to the other side of the world as soon as I could. (I thought for a while that Calvinism might be of interest, but then I discovered that when Calvinists speak of total depravity, they're not describing a goal.) What on earth, I asked myself with racing heart, is a solid-ink pencil?

I'm afraid that I don't yet have an answer to this truly burning question, dear readers. Google gives just six results when the phrase 'solid-ink pencil' is entered, and none of these offers a clear description of the writing instrument used by Jacques Austerlitz. One of the webpages suggested by the search engine, however, does at least provide a hint, for it outlines a patent dating from the year 1918:

Document Number: GB Patent 120120
Publication Date: 1918-10-31
Inventors: BURGE HENRY (GB)
Abstract: Abstract of GB120120 120,120. Burge, H. Nov. 15, 1917. Reservoir nibs. -A nib d is supported in struckup portions c of a barrel a at an angle to a solid-ink pencil b so as to overlie the pointed end e of the pencil. In use, the pen is dipped into water. The pencil b is sharpened in the usual way. In place of the pencil b, a stick of solid ink covered with paper may be employed.

The timing is a little out -- Austerlitz is describing events from the mid-1940s -- but the reference in the abstract to the need to dip the writing instrument into water suggests a vague connection. I am, however, puzzled by the slippage between 'pen' and 'pencil' in the patent, and the mention of 'a stick of solid ink' still leaves me baffled.

Baffled, but curious. Yes, dear readers, I am now on the lookout for a 'solid-ink pencil'. If I have to slum it and make my own by wrapping some paper around 'a stick of solid ink', so(lid) be it.

I have set my sights on this obscure object of desire for one principal reason. I have written about my fondness for my Smythson Panama notebook in previous entries, and I even provided a photograph of the item in one of my missives about the term 'pocket book'. But, while I cherish my jotter and carry it with me whenever possible, there's one thing about it that always troubles me: like Emyr Elias' grey notebook, the Smythson Panama comes with its own special pencil, as you can see from the image posted above. It's a special special pencil, yes -- this is Smythson merchandise, dahlings -- but it's still a pencil. And a pencil is not a pen.

I've often wished, then, for a very slender, short fountain pen which could take the place of the gold Smythson pencil in my notebook, but it's simply not possible to find a model that's thin enough. I now realize, however, that I have been looking in the wrong place: what I need is a 'solid-ink pencil'.

Or do I? Could I really live with solid ink? As I noted in a recent post, and as the author of Pennington-on-the-Paper has also pointed out, one of the pleasures of ink is its feral fluidity, its unpredictable and unmasterable nature. As soon as it's out of the bottle, it can go anywhere, strike any shape, shade and smudge in any way it decides. As soon as I pick up my fountain pen and start to write, I am not in control. I, in fact, become inked over, scribbled out.

But would it be the same with a solid-ink pencil? Wouldn't part -- perhaps all -- of the pleasure be lost? I'd have to try writing with one of these enigmatic objects to be sure, of course, but I have a feeling that the solidity of the instrument and the ink would frustrate me. Where would the flow and splatter be? And what about the risk, the sense of stepping into the unknown with each stroke of the nib? Could I ever be in solidarity with solidity?

I doubt it, dear readers, but I'm still curious at least to experiment with an example of the strange writing instrument mentioned in W.G. Sebald's book. Until I get my hands on one, though, I am, to misquote Bob Dylan's 'Solid Rock', 'hangin' on to a fluid rock/Made before the foundation of the world'. I'm just not the stereo type.

Ink in fluid use today: Noodler's Sequoia; Pelikan Blue.

PS (7.30pm): While one quest begins, another finally comes to an end. Alongside the endless search for the perfect ink, Ink Quest has regularly charted my search for the perfect notebook. And now, thanks to a review at Pennington-on-the-Paper, I have discovered what I believe to be the finest notebook ever created. (For another glowing write-up, click here.) It looks like a Moleskine, but the paper is infinitely better (and, moreover, is not covered with that horrible waxy substance that makes Moleskine sketchbooks so difficult to use). And here's the best bit: the A5-sized version is available from Asda supermarkets for just £3. I have just used my new acquisition for the first time with Pelikan Blue ink and a Sailor Music nib, and the results were magnificent. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to be stockpiling Asda notebooks in the coming weeks. I know that several honorary Penquod crew members based in Britain -- Hugh and Eileen, for instance -- are always on the hunt for the perfect notebook, so I urge them to rush to the nearest Asda at the earliest opportunity. As long as it's not the branch near Ink Towers.

The Land of Might Be

I've a novel 'o'.

I have to suspend my carefree holiday for the rest of the week, dear readers, as the nation's 'A' level results are about to be announced, which means that the university's admissions process is poised to go into overdrive. As I am responsible for the intake of a particular degree scheme in my department, I have ahead of me several joy-filled days of number-crunching and talking to distraught parents on the telephone.

Part of this evening, therefore, has been spent choosing the inks and writing instruments for tomorrow. As usual, I have written a few sample lines with each pen, just to make sure that the nib is smooth and that the ink is flowing correctly. When I picked up my Aurora Talentum, however, something felt wrong. It wasn't the nib, and it wasn't the ink. After some inkvestigation, I realized that the problem lay in my hand. Because I have not used any of my pens very much in the last couple of weeks, my muscles -- barely existent in the first place, I should add -- have evidently wasted away, leaving me virtually incapable of writing with a heavy fountain pen such as an Aurora Talentum. My usually impeccable letters sloped and slopped across the page of my notebook. The letter 'o', above all, was suffering: it looked squashed, then stretched, then simply defeated. 'Oh, "o"!', I cried. 'Haut "o" o' ago, where did you go?' And as I stared at the chaotic page with its overload of unrecognizable o's , a phrase came to me: I've a novel 'o'.

The line, it transpires, could be my salvation, for it seems to me that I could avoid future troubles with the novel 'o' if I became Ivor Novello. Well, a certain inkarnation of Ivor Novello. Allow me to explain.

While chasing Baby Ink and three of his rampaging friends around Cardiff Bay on Sunday afternoon, I glimpsed for the first time the recently erected monument to Ivor Novello, who was born in the city in 1893. (If you ever find yourself walking along Cowbridge Road East, look out for the blue plaque on the wall of Llwyn yr Eos, where Ivor made his entrance into the world.) The marauding toddlers prevented me from taking a closer look, but the Inkette's parents and younger sister were visiting yesterday, and we found ourselves once again in the Bay. As Baby Ink was outnumbered five-to-one on this occasion, I was able to inspect the bronze monument and to take photographs, two of which are displayed at the top of this post.

I'm not usually a fan of statues, but this one is rather appealing. To begin with, its position in the Bay is somewhat curious. Ivor finds himself caught between the old Cardiff and the new Cardiff, for his makers have positioned him between the ultra-modern Millennium Centre and the nineteenth-century Pierhead building. The following picture shows the former on the left, and the red-bricked Pierhead on the right:



As Novello is usually associated with the early years of the twentieth century -- I, for instance, always think of him as the star of Downhill and The Lodger, two of Alfred Hitchcock's silent films from the 1920s -- I would have expected to see him facing the older of the two buildings between which he perches. But he's actually turning his back on the Pierhead so that he can gaze at the contemporary architecture of the Millennium Centre, which didn't open until over fifty years after his death.

At first, I found this a little unsettling. Why would Novello ogle the novel? But as I walked around the statue with my camera, I suddenly noticed something reassuring: Ivor is writing with a fountain pen.



In other words, he may be turning his back on the magnificent stylings of the past, but what he holds in his hand eternally holds him back, holds him to the days of authentic writing instruments and ink. 'There a silver lining through the dark clouds shining', as one of his most famous songs has it.

As I was admiring the monument, the Inkette's father came over to take a closer look. 'Now there was a talent', he said. 'Such a shame he went off the rails'. (This judgement reminded me of my own father's assessment of my beloved Jack Jones: 'He could have been as famous as Tom, but he couldn't stop taking liberties with the songs.')

It seems to me, however, that Ivor Novello could stop my handwriting going off the rails in the future. What I clearly need is hands made out of bronze -- hands that would never weaken and struggle to form letters with a weighty fountain pen. In the land of might be (to twist the title of another Novello composition), I might more usefully be a statue, a monument to the manyment and manumission of manual submission.

Ink in (non-bronze) hand today: Mont Blanc Racing Green; Pelikan Blue.

Hölderlink

Ink: perfectly imperfect.

I am officially on holiday, dear readers, so my days are currently spent playing in the garden or on the beach with Baby Ink, and, when he has his mid-day nap, reading for pleasure. As my job involves a great deal of reading, it's sometimes hard for me to remember that it acceptable to indulge in a book that I am neither teaching nor planning to write about. When the summer comes, when my university email account has its automatic reply activated ('The supermarket is closed. Customers are advised to shop elsewhere'), I can finally pick up a book without simultaneously picking up a Faber Castell 9000 pencil to make notes in the margins.

So far, then, I have used my holiday to read for no purpose at all:

- Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist. The Inkette recently enjoyed this, largely, I suspect, because she finds me uncannily similar to Macon Leary, the perpetually grumpy writer who refuses to lend his fountain pen to strangers on planes, who likes routine and order, who prefers isolation to company, and who hates travelling.

- Thomas Bernhard's The World-Fixer. Honorary Penquod crew member Arty (happy birthday tomorrow!) recently introduced me to Bernhard's relentlessly misanthropic ranting, and I laughed out loud on numerous occasions while reading this bitter, brutal play. (George Steiner was right, I feel, to describe Bernhard as one of the great 'virtuosos of loathing'.)

- André Gide's La Symphonie pastorale. I've had a copy of Gide's journals on my shelf for about twenty years, but I've always felt that I should read some of the author's fiction before dipping into his diaries. (In a strange twist of fate, the shop from which I now regularly buy ink and paper stands on the site of the long-deceased bookshop from where I purchased the volume.) And so, while the sun shone above me last week, I enjoyed this short tale of sin, blindness, and misery. I did worry for a moment that all of the religious elements in the tale were anticipating a miraculous redemption on the final page, but the hopelessness, I'm pleased to report, endured.

- W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants. A former PhD student lent me a copy of Sebald's magnificently meandering The Rings of Saturn several years ago, and I've been planning ever since to read more by the author. Austerlitz has been waiting patiently on my bookshelf for about a year, but I picked up a secondhand copy of The Emigrants for £1.25 last week, and it's rather effortlessly defeated Austerlitz and jumped the queue.

I have also been catching up with recent issues of the Times Literary Supplement, which I buy every week, but often have to file away 'for future reference'. A review in last week's paper caught my eye when it turned its attention to the ink of a mighty German poet. The piece, 'The Method in Madness', was penned by Charlie Louth, and its focus was the publication of three new volumes of the work of Friedrich Hölderlin.

I don't know a great deal about Hölderlin's writing. I own a selection of his poetry and fragments in English, into which I dipped some years ago when I was teaching and planning to write about the poems of Paul Celan, who quoted one of Hölderlin's works ('The Rhine', if I remember correctly) in his cryptic 'Tübingen, January'. Having read last week's TLS, however, I feel compelled to learn more about Hölderlin -- and, above all, to scrutinize his manuscripts. This is because Charlie Louth's article discussed in passing the editorial practices of D.E. Sattler, who is responsible for the Sämtliche Werke: Frankfurter Ausgabe, the twentieth volume of which was one of the three publications under review.

Sattler, it seems, has been paying extremely close attention to the ink with which Hölderlin prepared his manuscripts. So much so, ink fact, that 'The Archipelago' -- a poem reworked by Hölderlin some time after its original composition -- has been refashioned in the light of the way in which the ink fell onto the page:

In its new shape, the late form of the poem has twenty-four sections and 288 lines (i.e. two more sections but sixteen fewer lines) [...] In order to engineer this, Sattler makes very free with the manuscripts, reading tiny flecks and spatterings of ink, the natural concomitants of writing with a quill, as licences to insert stanza-breaks and make cuts wherever it suits him. His premiss is that no mark however slight is insignificant and that Hölderlin has in effect scrambled his manuscripts so that their true meaning will emerge only when the time is right (i.e. when Sattler appears), but, as the facsimiles show, there are in fact many blots and spots he pays no attention to.

I have not seen Hölderlin's manuscripts. Even though I cannot read a word of German (Jack Gladney, er, c'est moi!), I will be ordering a copy of volume 20 of the Sämtliche Werke: Frankfurter Ausgabe for the university library so that I can consult the inky marks of which Louth writes, and of which Sattler makes so much. (Should a librarian comment on my apparent fluency in German when I take the book to the issue desk, I will simply reply, 'Oh, I'm not interested in the poetry; I'm just curious about the ink blots'.)

Louth's article has led me to give some thought to the way in which writing with a fountain pen often leads to slight imperfections upon the page. Word-processing software produces perfect letters upon the screen and the paper; writing with a ballpoint is a hideous experience, yes, but biros very rarely spit ink. Even the most tame fountain pen, however, occasionally conjures up a stray speck; the wild spray of Hölderlin's quill still flaps its wings faintly in the modern moment. Perhaps the nib catches and, as it comes free, flings forth a droplet. Perhaps the paper is prone to feathering and lets the inky marks spread further than their creator intended. Or perhaps the eager scribbler simply failed to let the words dry before turning the page. (The handwritten version of the entry that you are currently reading was marred in precisely this way, ink fact.)

Is it odd that none of these side-effects bothers me? Is it even stranger that I, a man obsessed by the finer points (usually at the expense of the bigger picture), actually find these little moments of imperfection pleasurable?

Perhaps not. Ink, for me, is perfectly imperfect. Its unpredictable failings are actually its successes. In a world ruled by principles of homogenization, efficient uniformity, and safe sterility, ink is the mark -- the unexpected mark -- of an alternative. I don't want my handwritten pages to resemble justified, crisp, spotless sheets of Times New Roman; that's precisely why I cling so stubbornly to my fountain pen and my splattering ink. I need to know that when I write, I don't know what will happen. The blank page sits patiently in front of me, and it will never be blank again as soon as the writing begins. (Have I stolen this from Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude?) This much is certain, predictable. But what's unknown when real ink is involved is precisely how the blankness will recede, how its white challenge will come to colour. And that's the force of writing.

Walter Benjamin, whose love of stationery and fountain pens has been discussed in a previous post, famously noted that works of art lose their 'aura' in an age when they can be mechanically reproduced. Isn't the same thing happening to the word in the time of Word, when novels and poems are regularly produced without pen ever touching paper? Hölderlin's quill cast drops of ink across his poetry -- and that, for me, is its unique aura. But a twenty-first century poet who works only with a blank screen and a keyboard -- who never struggles against pen and paper -- is doomed to generate bland babble without character.





We who breathe ink know that it is aura.

Ink creating aura today: Pelikan Blue; Noodler's Nightshade.

PS (20 August): Honorary Penquod crew member Ken has proposed the following as an alternative translation of the final part of the Paul Celan poem quoted above:

Suppose
Suppose a man came,
Suppose a man came into the world today, with
the "Shiny Beard of the
Patriarchs": he would,
if he spoke at all about this
time (in history), he
would
only babble and babble
on and on.

PPS (21 August): A nice response to this post at Pennington-on-the-Paper has just come to my attention.

PPPS (2 September): My plan to obtain a copy of volume 20 of Hölderlin's Sämtliche Werke: Frankfurter Ausgabe for the university library has been placed on höld, dear readers, for Carlos -- my eternally sceptical colleague who occasionally raises his eyebrows at these ramblings -- has vowed that he, as departmental library representative, will not, in these times of cutbacks, be approving the purchase of, as he put it, 'a book that you can't even read'.

To Be, Or Knot To Be

Ink v. tie: it's a tie.

As longtime readers of Ink Quest know, I spend a considerable amount of time every evening choosing my three inks for use in work on the following day. I don't think that I've ever reported at length, however, just how much time is also spent selecting the suit, tie, and pocket square. (All in all, it's probably fair to say that I start preparing for the next day the moment I arrive home.) I don't own as many ties and pocket squares as I do bottles of ink, but I have recently been forced to invest in a special storage box for my neck- and pocket-wear. It's not as big as the ink box, however, as you can see:



I'm fortunate, I suppose, to be part of a profession where there is no dress code. British academics can wear whatever they like to work, and it's been my experience that most men choose to dress down. (A long way down, in some cases.) In other words, I'm not required to turn up for work in a suit and tie ... which is probably why I happily turn up for work in a suit and tie.

There are several reasons why I choose to dress in this way. First, I like to have entirely separate work and non-work costumes (and I do think of them as costumes); the two worlds should never collide. Second, I am conscious of the fact that wearing a suit and tie, especially if the former is pin-striped, to work at the university is, for some, simply not the done thing. I have, for instance, been at several union meetings where the latest disgraceful behaviour by The Management has been discussed. The bosses, in such heated exchanges, are frequently denounced as 'The Suits', and I always quietly enjoy my sartorial status at such moments, even though I am not (and will never be) one of The Management, and even though I am actually an active member of the union who is constantly horrified by the workplace practices of the institution. The contrarian in me, I think, is amused by the fact that my dress code probably leads some of the other activists to think that I am a spy for The Other Side. (Whoever said that we Welsh are good at only two things -- being contrary and being melancholy -- was onto something.)

Third, I like to think that my formal approach to clothing in the workplace does not instantly mark me out as an academic to strangers. I have, in fact, been addressed as 'Mr Businessman' by 'chuggers' on several occasions, and even 'banker' once or twice. (That's what it sounded like, at least.) I have no desire to be either a businessman or a banker, but I also have no desire to be identifiable as an academic from twenty paces. Never let them know what you really are. I go to work, then, imagining that I am a member of the cast of Mad Men. Sartorially, I mean: I don't want to give you the impression that I set off for the office and call female colleagues 'Sugar', smoke a pack of filterless before 10am, neck six martinis over lunch, indulge in a spot of casual anti-Semitism, and then expect to find my food on the table when I get home. It's all about the clothes, dear readers, and I have taken the liberty, as you can see if you look at the picture at the top of this entry, of turning myself into a Mad Men character with AMC's handy new 'Mad Men Yourself' website. The second image displayed above is the Inkette's own version of herself.

Above all, though, as I have noted in previous posts, I like wearing suits and ties because I have had enough of the sloppy informality that has overtaken Western dress in recent decades. (The author of Ravens March wrote a wonderful post on this topic recently, and I've been led by a more recent entry of his to the blog of a truly stylish gent.) If taking a stance against sportswear and elasticated waists means being seen as 'a suit', that suits me just fine.

In fact, suits, ties, and pocket squares are only the beginning of my war against scruffiness: I have decided that I need a silver-handled walking cane to complete the look. There is nothing wrong with my legs, dear readers; I was simply struck by a scene in last week's Ugly Betty in which Mark effortlessly carried off a glorious jacket-tie-waistcoat-hat-buttonhole-and-cane combination:



Sadly, I fear that I will always be devoid of cane (cane unable?), for the Inkette has threatened -- no, promised, she reminds me -- divorce if I tip-tap my way down that particular route.

I was distraught, then, when I managed to ruin (or so I thought) a red silk tie last Thursday morning. I was nearly ready to leave for work. The day's three pens were safely packed in my case. My reading material for the train had been chosen. The pocket square had been selected to work in perfect harmony with the suit, the shirt, and the tie. I had shaved with my new Truefitt and Hill luxury soap and delicately sprinkled my frail wrists with Floris No. 89. (Des Esseintes -- mon sembable -- mon frère!) Things were looking good.

And then I noticed a small dark mark on my red silk tie. Instinctively, I touched it with my finger ... at which point it became apparent that the spot was actually a drop of blue ink, which instantly spread across the tie. I had about two minutes until I was due to leave the house to catch the train to work. Ignoring all advice about silk and water, I soaked up as much of the blot as I could with tissue paper, and then rubbed the affected area with a dampened cloth. The tie looked terrible, but time was against me, so I undid the knot and made my way to the station with an open-necked shirt. I felt cheap, scruffy, depraved, worthless, but there simply wasn't time to select another tie to accompany the clothing that had been chosen with such care the previous night.

Less than halfway through the journey to work, I had decided that I simply couldn't spend a day in the office without a tie, so I hatched a clever plan. Getting off the train one stop earlier than usual, I walked slowly through the city, waiting for the shops to open at 9am. I then purchased a new red silk tie, told the assistant that I wanted to wear it immediately, and used the mirror on one of the pillars in the store to check that I had tied the knot satisfactorily. (Curious aside: I have always believed that I use the Windsor knot, but recent research into alternative knots suggests otherwise. In fact, I can find no record of my preferred knot, which was taught to me by my father many years ago. The next time I am in London, I think that I will march into a shop on Jermyn Street, point to my tie, and shout, 'What the hell is this?')

When I got home that evening, I returned to the ink-stained tie, ready to throw it into the bin. I picked it up and prepared to say my farewells. But the stain was nowhere to be seen. Neither was water damage of any kind; the garment had dried and looked as good as new. My tie, dyed, had died and dried, and had been reborn.

I'm still not sure exactly what happened; as soon as the reports are back from forensics, I will let you know. But here's my theory: I've been using Waterman Florida Blue quite a lot recently, and I think I may have been wearing the red tie in question when, approximately a week earlier, I carried my vintage Parker Duofold home from work in the pocket of one of my suits. The pen in question, which is now over half a century old, does sometimes leak a little from its nib, so I suspect that a tiny drop of ink fell from the Duofold and landed upon my tie, where it somehow lay untouched for a week. Waterman Florida Blue is, of course, a fairly unsaturated and easily washable ink -- honorary Penquod crew member Eileen recently inkformed me that she'd switched to it while marking hundreds of students' essays, as more saturated colours were leaving her fingers excessively stained -- so my mopping and washing must have erased all traces of blue from the tie.

That's my theory, at least. I've tied myself in knots trying to think of another explanation for the tie that got it in the neck but refused to perish. I am now up to my neck in red silk ties, of course, but I like to think that my little inkident, my unnecessary spending of money, has helped to boost the floundering British economy a little. The Penquod: saving the world at a rate of knots.

Ink in use today: Pelikan Blue.