THE ROMANCE OF BEING MR WRITE...
BILL Place of Oakes has been reflecting on how change can sneak up without you noticing. He took crossword puzzles with him for a medical appointment, in case he had to wait, and realised he had forgotten a pen. When he borrowed a ballpoint from a lady receptionist, he said he would make sure he returned it. As a joke, he said she might not have got it back if it had been a Parker.
“I had to explain to her and the other reception ladies what a Parker, or any other fountain pen, was. She was amazed. I never got round to explaining what a typewriter was.”
Later he read that a computer failure had badly affected Redcar and Cleveland Council and that staff were having to write notes in longhand.
Shock! Horror! At the same time, Heathrow went into meltdown when they had a computer glitch. Flights were lost, departure lists written in longhand on white boards and passengers were stranded.
Like Bill, I am continually amazed at how technology has changed everyday life. As a journalist I took notes in shorthand and wrote stories on a sit-upand-beg-typewriter whose keys were as dangerous as Arkwright’s till.
If sending a story, I would dictate it over the phone to a copy-taker at the other end. Now I write this column at home, send it by email and a sub-editor puts it straight into a page.
Contacting someone at the other side of town or the world, meant writing a letter or making a phone call. Way back then, I was an inveterate letter writer and diarist, all written with a fountain pen. There is something quite timeless and satisfying watching the ink flow into words upon vellum that is never achieved by keypad and screen.
A fountain pen was always an item of prestige and I received my first, a Parker, when I started grammar school. I wrote my first book with a gold Sheaffer fountain pen, correcting and subbing it chapter by chapter, before typing the first draft on an Olivetti typewriter.
The Sheaffer is long gone, broken by over-use, the typewriter sits on a shelf, but I still have three fountain pens. Sadly I never use them. Like almost everyone else, I have been seduced by the convenience and speed of a computer, with no need of Tippex or carbon paper with which to make a duplicate.
The romance of the fountain pen has sadly died, but let’s face it, a computer is so much swifter and more efficient.