My first post of each week usually sets the tone for the other two, and those that do not fit neatly into my weekly triptych tend to find themselves plunged into the abyss that is my ‘Holiday Posts’ file, where they sit and wait for me to not be around for a few days. Generally I like these Holiday Posts because we both share the experience of sitting outside the fence, and also because they tend to be written as a consequence of not having to think about what I am about to write. Thinking things through is the bane of my life.
Today being Monday I should be writing the post from which, like ringworm, the other two will develop, but I am instead chewing the end off a cheap biro and staring at the unused face of a previously employed sheet of paper. I never actually write with the cheap biro: I have a tub full of decent pens (e.g. ball point is not hemispherical, plastic case is not broken into razor-sharp shards, end cap has not been masticated) for that. The cheap one is just for gnawing. It comes into use only when the others – even the most powerful green rollerball – have failed. I used to have pencils for chewing, but I kept swallowing the rubbers*. It can often take me quite a while to find the right pen for the day, but as soon as I do find it, things generally fall into place. Some days, though, none of my pens seem to fit and then cometh the hour of the plastic Bic and jaw exercises.
…And just in case you are thinking that my handwriting is some kind of Calligraphers wet-dream, it is not. It is at best a scrawl and at worst a scruffy sub-decipherable mess that I generally have to wrestle into some form of sense before it hits the computer. I do own, and occasionally use, fountain pens with which I stain my fingers, but most of my ‘special pens’ are ballpoints. From time to time they are ‘the right pens’ but mostly they are not: they are frustrating obstacles to my muse.
And should you be thinking ‘It’s a bad workman that blames his tools’ then you might well be right – although, to be fair, I do not blame my pens, the fault is all mine. I have a myriad of tools to use: laptops, iphone, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, rollerballs, pencils and when none of the above are able to meet my aspirations, bags of ten-for-a-pound biros on which to nag. They are all good, solid, workman-like pens. I, on the other hand, am a rubbish writer – except for the times when I am no writer at all, when I become a man who dines on thickened ink. Inspiration, when it does arrive, more often than not does so in the form of a giant block of Cadbury’s and a tumbler full of Scotland’s finest.
And if it doesn’t come until Tuesday? Well, maybe it’s time for another holiday…
*I’m not sure whether this is a purely British colloquialism for the titchy little pencil-borne erasers that sit, metal-encased, at the blunt end of the graphite rod: ‘rubbers’ because they rub things out. They will not prevent pregnancy or STD, but they might mean that you get an extra attempt at spelling colloquialism.
Getting On 