As a child I remember first having to write with a pencil. We were taught how to do cursive handwriting from Standard 2 (Second Grade) and we each had a handwriting exercise book with lots of special lines to delineate where to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. I remember being very upset when I couldn’t remember the variations of the letter ‘r’ that I was supposed to write as homework.
Beginning in Standard 3 we started to write with ink - yes, with fountain pens. My first fountain pen, as far as I remember, was a maroon Pilot school pen (or was it green?). It was light and easy to write with and took a fair amount of rough handling. I remember that one of the ‘rules’ was that you filled your pen every night before coming to school, because you weren’t meant to carry that glass Quink bottle of royal blue ink around in your bag. Of course I had to flout this rule by bringing my Quink to school one fateful day in Standard 4. I think I wanted to test the teacher’s claim that the bottle would break - I didn’t believe this was possible (without much force) because Quink bottles were (still are) so solid. Well, the bottle didn’t break, but its cap did - it cracked. All my books, my hands were stained blue. The teacher was not impressed!
We were only allowed to use ballpoint pens in Standard 6. I remember it seemed like such a big deal at the time.
I wonder if children in Australia even know what a fountain pen is these days. M, educated in the West Australian primary school system, was never taught how to use one, and nowadays when speed and convenience rules, I’m sure a fountain pen would be seen as an inconvenient, messy anachronism. And maybe learning how to use a keyboard would be more useful for kids anyway. I for one am glad I learnt how to write using a fountain pen, and will continue to use them with pleasure!
My
collection - 46 pens! - as it stands on 16 October 2005.
I have no plans to buy any more pens.
(Yes, but that’s what I said
last time!)
Categories: fountain pens, writing, handwriting
Read a post about handwriting on Night Hawk’s blog. He mentions a post from a teacher bemoaning the fact that her students are less and less able to write or even read cursive handwriting. I have no idea how handwriting is taught in schools nowadays. Is it even taught? Or do kids get taught how to use a keyboard instead? I’m not surprised kids these days have difficulty reading cursive handwriting - it takes practice, but how much practice can you get when almost everything is typed these days?
I think M and I will have written hundreds, if not thousands, of emails to each other over the years. (We still do, most weekdays.) I’ve tried to save most of them and I still have the first emails M ever wrote me, including the one that really started off our relationship. If we’d met earlier, before email became so commonplace, would we have handwritten notes to each other instead?
Like Night Hawk, I too do make it a point to write as much as I can every day. This means that I have a paper diary, maintain a journal (apart from this blog! The paper journal is quite different in tone from the electronic one; I make no comment on the quality of the content, however!), and I am always writing notes during meetings and seminars. I try to write letters whenever I can, too. Writing during meetings has a dual function for me - it usually means I stay awake, because if I am going to note what people are discussing I have to pay attention. Night Hawk doesn’t mention the sort of pen he uses for his writing (probably a ballpoint pen of some sort?) - I always use a fountain pen, one from my collection.
Handwriting: Change by T. ChapmanOriginally uploaded by CW.
This is a sample of my handwriting (click on the image if you want to scrutinise my scribble more closely - All Sizes will display the whole mess). Written with a fountain pen, of course (my Pelikan M200 with a Fine goldplated nib, using Waterman Florida Blue ink).
My love for handwriting is sort of interfering with my use of the Tablet PC at the moment. I’d like to use the Tablet a lot more than I do, but whenever I go to meetings, my desire to hold a pen that has flowing ink often gets in the way and I succumb to pen and paper instead. The stylus pen and faux electronic ink just doesn’t grip me the way a smooth fountain pen feels on paper…
Categories: writing, handwriting, fountain pens
I feel really, really tired this morning. Not sure why, as I didn’t go to bed late or anything like that. I’m glad it’s the weekend tomorrow. Hopefully this Saturday is less exhausting than last Saturday! I’m listening to smarmy, cheerful P. Ramlee music at the moment in the attempt to wake myself up a bit (not too loud though or the hoola hoop song Bila Mama Pakai Celana will force M out of bed in a rampage of amused disgust)!
I was thinking about all the recent disasters and horrors and my response to them. I don’t normally write about these disasters because I’m not normally on the cutting edge of the news and by the time I find out about events, most news agencies and bloggers have already written reams about them. In any case I don’t think I have any response that would not be trite.
These days I find I just feel numb and emotionless about all this death and destruction. Looking at the pictures of children being dragged from rubble in Kashmir, or weeping mothers in Guatemala, or mourning people in Bali, I can say all the right things: “Those poor parentsâ€, or “How can we do this to each other??†But I don’t really feel anything apart from maybe “oh no, not again!†I find I have the same response to things happening in Australia. It’s as if it’s all gotten too much. Is this terrible of me?
Categories: navel-gazing
Beginning in Standard 3 we started to write with ink - yes, with fountain pens. My first fountain pen, as far as I remember, was a maroon Pilot school pen (or was it green?). It was light and easy to write with and took a fair amount of rough handling. I remember that one of the ‘rules’ was that you filled your pen every night before coming to school, because you weren’t meant to carry that glass Quink bottle of royal blue ink around in your bag. Of course I had to flout this rule by bringing my Quink to school one fateful day in Standard 4. I think I wanted to test the teacher’s claim that the bottle would break - I didn’t believe this was possible (without much force) because Quink bottles were (still are) so solid. Well, the bottle didn’t break, but its cap did - it cracked. All my books, my hands were stained blue. The teacher was not impressed! 
