Fountain pens?

Fountain pens leak...yes, they do. I know. One of my school blazers had a stain in the pocket. The person who owned it before me had a fountain pen which leaked.

I need to explain here that our mother never bought us new blazers. We always had "hand me down" uniforms wherever possible because our mother knew we would likely not be at any school more than a few years.

She was right in that prediction of course. We kittens also watched other students line up on the first day of the new school year and knew we were not so very different from most other students. School uniform was expensive and most people made it last from one child to the next to the next...on and on.

At the end of each year we would be given a list of things that would be needed the following year that could not be bought from the school stationery cupboard. It never included a fountain pen. 

In primary school there were the even then old fashioned dip pens, the heavy china ink wells that fitted into the holes in the desks (with no allowance for left handed humans) and the ink made from ink powder and tap water. In the upper school some people did have fountain pens, a few had biros. Some people still used dip pens because, out in the bush, people did things like that. If you went into the bank there were the dip pens too. I never did see the bank manager use the red ink dip pen but I often wondered about it.

The Senior Cat had a fountain pen, as did his father. They were mostly used to write letters and sign documents. Apart from that they were pencil people. My paternal grandmother used a dip pen. She did very little writing. The shopping list was done in pencil. Her writing was schoolgirl neat. My maternal grandmother would write hers in a rough sort of shorthand - something she had been taught in school at the age of twelve and never fully lost. She also had a fountain pen. Her letters to our mother were written with that pen. 

I used pencil. I was actually not the only one to use pencil. Pencils were easy to use. They were only a problem at exam time. Exams were supposed to be written in ink. Somehow most people seemed to manage but there were many muttered curses. The whole "ink" business seemed messy to us. Middle Cat makes the most wonderful pen and ink drawings but she shies away from fountain pens. "They leak or run out at the wrong time."

So I can sympathise with the new King Charles. I really feel he was incredibly restrained when that fountain pen leaked.  He didn't use any unacceptable language. He didn't really lose his temper. He just expressed the frustration so many other people have felt from time to time. The person who has to get the ink stains out of the handkerchief on which he wiped his hands will probably mutter something much worse.