07 Wednesday Oct 2020
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OK a slightly misleading title, but presently I am spending time going through my late father’s documents and making notes with my pens, rather than my laptop (who would have thought I have been working in IT for over 20 years, much of it hands on the technical side). With that in mind I’ve actually assembled a slightly different set of pens from normal, and these I’ve been carrying up to my mother’s for a few weeks now.
Continue reading18 Friday Sep 2020
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What no Parker?! – I know readers were expecting me to cover the pen that moved me on from that one manufacturer and kindled the start of my collecting, however as previously mentioned I had bought a Lamy as a second pen to use with red ink a few years before (and strictly speaking I had previously owned some cheap Reynolds pens bought from hypermarkets in France).
Continue reading14 Friday Aug 2020
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In some respects this was a key pen for me. This was the first fountain pen I bought with my own money (as opposed to being a present or using holiday money, the latter being used a few times on cheap French hypermarket sourced pens). Based on where I was working at the time it will have been around 2003-2005, though where I bought it from I no longer remember.
Continue reading03 Monday Aug 2020
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It’s been four months since my last update, since when I went from working from home to being put on furlough, so the pens in use have been those at my PC not in my daily carry case.
Continue reading30 Thursday Jul 2020
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Just a quick update to say the final three will be covered later. Both the Parkers are inked and being used, but I’m taking a break and will go back to reviewing new and recent pens and those I think will be of interest to you (or which I have been asked to cover).
11 Saturday Jul 2020
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Quite possible the seminal Parker fountain pen. First produced in 1941, introducing the concept of the hooded nib and with a production run in multiple countries which lasted for just over 30 years, this must be one of the best known modern day writing implements. Too young to have received a 51 before they stopped production, I came in to possession of mine after my paternal grand father died in the late 1970s/early 1980s (think I was 10-12 at the time).
Continue reading06 Monday Jul 2020
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Mid 1982 and I received a present from either relations or friends of the family. A Parker 45 Harlequin fountain pen and ball point set, complete in a brown and beige hinged box. The latter in hindsight was appropriate to a young teenager for the Flighter, as the Parker 45 was also known, looked distinctly dated compared to the modern and edgy 25s I was using at school.
Continue reading26 Friday Jun 2020
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I must have been around 10 or 11, maybe slightly younger, when I bought a Platignum fountain pen with my pocket money. I don’t think it was my first and I doubt I would have been allowed to use it at school as they provided free pencils, plus dip pen shaped ballpoints to those in the final year who had passed the writing test (so everybody by the final term in theory). This calligraphy set will have come later, but I suspect I still bought it before I was 14 or 15, which in some respects was odd as I hated writing and my calligraphy (from mandatory art classes) was poor at best.
Continue reading25 Thursday Jun 2020
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Just a quick note before today/tomorrow’s regular post. While I know quite a few of you are looking forwards to my present views on my Parker 25, at present it (and the 45) are being used as dailies to remind me what they are like and what I think of them now. As a result the probable order will be:
19 Friday Jun 2020
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A mixture of the present lock down situation, plus posts from other bloggers has got me to thinking back about earlier pens. Thus in the near future I will start reviewing the ones I still own as a trip down my memory lane, but for today a little personal fountain pen history.
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