THESSALON-

I have a stash of writing books; not books about writing, although I have those, too, but books to write in. Blank books call to me, stick to my fingers, sneak into my shopping bags when I'm not looking. David and I have agreed that I'm not allowed any more writing books until I use up what I have. So I was surprised to get one this year for Christmas from David.

It's a beautiful book. It might have been made just for me bound in brown leather, with a gryphon tooled on the front and two metal clasps to hold the book closed. Oh, yes, and the pages are handmade paper. It's gorgeous, and I'm looking forward to using it.

Of course, you don't write in a book like that with a ballpoint pen or a Sharpie, or even one of those really fine rollerball pens. You need a fountain pen to write in a book like that.

I'm no stranger to fountain pens. When I was in public school, back when the school buses were pulled by woolly mammoths, every desk had a hole in the top right corner to accommodate a bottle of ink. Of course we learned to write with pencils. Even when we switched to pens, the standard was not a fountain pen, but a ballpoint. Those ballpoints were something different, too not disposable Bics, but elegant things with three-part barrels. Often the top and bottom were different colours, but there was always a little white-metal band in the centre. When the ink ran out, you unscrewed the two parts of the barrel to replace the slender plastic tube of ink. Inevitably, the metal band fell on the floor and rolled under something, and the little spring around the tube of ink sprang out and boinged off across the room. I believe that changing the refill in my ballpoint pen as a ten-year-old gave me my current conviction that any little motor I take apart will throw pieces irretrievably around the room.

But I digress. I remember owning a fountain pen with a reservoir and a little lever. When you ran out of ink, you stuck the nib in the bottle of ink and flipped the lever out and back. The lever squeezed the rubber reservoir in the barrel of the pen flat, and then released it to suck up ink. A bit Rube Goldberg, maybe, but it worked.

The pen was an old one my mother gave me. Nowadays it would be retro and valuable, but then it was just that old pen that she didn't need because she had another, and good enough for a child to use at school. It was made of pearly white plastic, and the nib, lever and pocket clip were gold-coloured. Heck, it was the early 1960s and this was an old pen they might have been gold-plated. Probably worth a lot on eBay these days. I also remember buying bottles of blue-black ink at Woolworth's.

I don't currently own a fountain pen; the inevitable conclusion is that I need to acquire one. We started by looking at the selection available locally. The prices ranged from about $40 to $100, and made me miss my long-gone pearly-white hand-me-down. The cheapest fountain pen available was about 40,000 times costlier than the ubiquitous ten-for-a-buck stick pens I usually use.

So David, as is his wont, began looking on line at fountain pens. What he found was paeans of praise for the delights of writing with a fountain pen. No more pressing down on the page to make the ball lay down a pasty line, but a light and delightful exercise of floating the nib over the paper on a layer of liquid ink. Writing, apparently, becomes so enjoyable with a fountain pen that you do more of it. It also, the sell went on, makes you a better writer. Then he got to the prices.

I could shell out $100 for a Cross fountain pen in my local stationery emporium, or I could go the luxury route and buy a pen for $500, $1,200 or if I'm really committed to good writing - $15,000. Yes, a one, a five and three zeros. That is almost what I take home from a year of wage-slavery. When I heard that, what I said was well, not fit for publication in a family newspaper. If I spent that kind of money on a fountain pen, it damn well better make me a better writer. In fact, it had better make me Shakespeare.

Suddenly the $100-pen doesn't look quite as expensive. Besides, if I mortgaged the dog and bought the pen for fifteen grand and became a better writer, I'd probably have to buy a better journal. And I'm not allowed any more writing books, at least until I use up what I have.

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Fountain pen prices 'write' out there - Sault Star