I firmly believe the world is divided into two types
of people: those who get so excited by the sight, smell and feel of new
stationery that they could quite happily spend a few hours wandering around
Paperchase, stroking silver fountain pens, sniffing ink and trying to convince
themselves the forty nine pristine notebooks they already own need just one more
to complete the set; and those who are quite puzzled by all of the above and
regard a pen and paper as a means to an end: a shopping list, a note to the
delivery man, a recorded phone number.
Needless to say, I'm firmly in the former
category.
My one abiding memory from my first day at school is
of the smell of the multi coloured crayons, nestling in a pot in the centre of
the knee high table. That waxy smell
stayed with me all through school. It was the scent of excitement, of
creativity, of pure happiness, and that never changed. I don't know whether those crayons
influenced my career choice, or whether I was drawn to them because I was
already feeling the stirrings of an artistic future, but opening a box of them
for the grandchildren instantly transports me back to that first day at school
and the excitement that lay ahead.
When I was sixteen I went to France for two months,
between 'O' Levels and 'A' Levels, supposedly to improve my French. I stayed in
a Children's Home, up in the mountains, away from all other civilisation: Nobody
spoke English, there were no houses and only one shop within a 10km radius. The
shop, bizarrely, sold stationery and nothing else. I can remember, quite
clearly, setting off alone for the shop, on a rare free afternoon, my mind
desperately seeking a reprieve from the stomach churning home sickness that had
enveloped me since I'd arrived.
The shop was tiny and dark and packed with notebooks,
envelopes, pens and pencils. I was
eyed suspiciously from behind a huge stack of cream paper but I didn't care, I
was in heaven and I had few centimes to spend.
I still have the notebooks that I used as diaries.
Their tiny squared pages are crammed with writing so small that I struggle to
read the words that tell me how sad I was to leave behind the children from the
home, and how I cried all the way down the mountain on the first leg of my
journey back to England.
Visiting my parents this weekend, my dad beckons me
over to his desk. 'You know where this came from?' he asks, as he does each time
I'm here. He holds up a 'silver' propelling pencil. It's a rhetorical question.
We both laugh. Of course I know, it came from the only shop on a French Mountain
nearly fifty years ago.
It's been lost more times than I can remember,
turning up down the sides of sofas, under the piano, at the back of a drawer.
Its sides have worn smooth with use, it produces writing rather more shaky than
when it first landed on dad's desk and it's worth far more to both of us than
the few centimes it originally cost.
'That' Propelling Pencil |
Progress
Blue crayon skids across the newsprint
A shaky sea slides in, sky looks down shyly
Pencil, gripped in clumsy fist,
Makes the first markings of a giant
M for Mummy, for Me
Letters firm and neat, joined up, 'Real
Writing'
Pencil swapped for coveted ink pen
Stories spring to life
Across a page with margins and feint lines
Happily ever after?
The end?
The humble pencil is no longer
the sharpest tool in the stationary
cupboard
Tablets rule
Ok??
Thanks for reading, Jill
3 comments:
I can totally relate to this. I cannot walk past the stationery isle in Tesco's without stopping to admire the notebooks. I have a cupboard full of them - all with good intentions attached of what they will one day be filled with. I love a trip out to a good stationery shop and much prefer this to shoe shopping. So good to know I'm not on my own with this obsession. Love the poem Jill.
Jill - the artist was there from the start. Thank goodness it was nurtured. Smashing read.
Thanks Adele xx
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