Pen's for your thoughts.

I got to the train station the other morning and realised that I had left all of my usual pens (Staedtler Triplus ballpoints) in the living room at home and had nothing to write with should the urge strike me. Disaster. I was absolutely bereft, so a visit to WH Smith was called for as soon as it opened.

It takes me about as long to buy a pen as it does any normal person to buy a pair of shoes, or adopt a child. A pen to me feels like an important investment, the benchmark for the next period of my life, until it runs out or I lose it.

Whole epochs can be defined by having a trusty pen by your side. I can think of all the fun times I’ve had with a soft-grip Papermate, Berol handwriting pen or my exquisite set of coloured Stabilo fineliners. I can’t use a fountain pen or anything with gel ink because my left-handed grip is something akin to a monkey clenching a banana in its fist.

I am therefore quite particular – I need something quick and smooth, because my hand gets cramped. I need a quick-drying ink, because my hand drags across the page ‘like a demented spider that has fallen in ink’, as my primary school teacher Miss Vials put it so aptly. My personal preference is for something of medium thickness and black ink, but I’m not a snob.

Once I have the right pen (I went through a bad patch with Paperchase earlier in the year) we are BFFs, until one of us gets bored or dies. Right now I am in the honeymoon period with the surprise addition of a Parker rollerball to my portfolio, even if the heavy ink does seep through the page more than is to my taste. I have written this post out in delightful, flowing, crisp and unsmudged black lines. Typing it up just isn’t as fun.