Propelling Pencils

Anthony : My father always had a propelling pencil but he used it more for tamping down his pipe, so the butt end of his pencil was always well stained, but he did a lot of sketching and designing always in pencil. I’ve always been a user of pencil because of being able to rub it out, which contrasts with Alison who always goes in for biro, and I find very frustrating as once one has marked something it is marked and I suppose in that sense I’m more of a designer than she is – I can’t believe I really am – well she’s more of an artist and designers need to correct things etc, but anyway, so I always had pencils but I lost them, and it was only when I was a director of John Smith’s bookshop because the boss of it Robert Clow was a great friend, and he had a respect for the success of Star Refrigeration that he asked me to be a director. It was really a waste of time because he never listened to any of my suggestions but I thereby got a 25% discount on everything in the shop and so when I next lost my pencil and went and bought one from there and I asked everyone there what was the best and they said definitely the Cross – it’s an American make that I think had a factory on the British Isles somewhere. I bought it and I found it very reliable and good etc and so I was very upset when I lost it but it was relatively cheap for an expensive pencil. It must have cost…. Ooooh I can’t remember yesterday’s money. £25 goes through my mind but that may be current I’ve no idea but to me it was expensive. I’d never spent that on a pencil before. And I really enjoyed it. So when the next time I lost it was much more recently I decided that these were too good to always be fussing about so I looked at it on eBay and found that by buying a second hand one, they were a tenth of the price and just as good.  I’ve had one failure but I must have bought half a dozen cross pencils on the internet. The one in my pocket has a gold sheen on it, and my problem so often is that I seem to have very corrosive sweat. I first discovered that with leather watch straps – a leather watch strap never lasted a year before it just rotted and fell apart. It wasn’t just the thread binding or anything it was the whole leather – it just went rotten and smelly. And so that’s why probably in your memory I’ve always been wearing plastic watch straps. That was the reason I went to Cross. They’ve done me well. They particularly plate the point where ones fingers go and often in pencils one sees them corroded away. Some of my old pencils before I got onto Cross, that was what actually brought them to their deaths. So when you turned up the other day with this pencil which you had found in the raspberry patch I wasn’t exactly surprised when other than very coloured on the barrel it was working perfectly. A little stiffer than it was but not much, and it is, one can see the corrosion at the tip. The combination of the garden and the sweat has been too much for it, but it’s perfectly good and gives a good grip.

[MIL – you always always have one in your pocket don’t you?] 

Yes, and I’ve got one beside my computer and I’ve got one on my desk, and so now, the one you found on the raspberry patch is on the kitchen table. 

[has this affected the choice of shirts you buy?]

Not really, because the sorts of shirts I buy typically have a pocket, some have two. It’s a nuisance when like this one they have a button because it catches. A small penalty to live with. When I was at the office of course I wore it in my jacket pocket, not on the breast but the inside diary pocket. 

Always was HB, but I’ve now gone to B – now I have to press too hard to be able to read it, my eyesight not being as good as it was. 0.9mm lead. 

[Mil – did you have a favourite fountain pen] 

Oh yes, a Waterman pen. Waterman before the American Parker came in when I was a child at school and first had to have a pen for schoolwork, I got a Waterman’s pen and oooooh, that’s the district nurse, shall we stop there? It was an old friend, lasted through the army and everything, but eventually I think I lost it, I can’t remember, but so now I’ve moved to buying them at the pen shop in Princes Square – Mont Blanc. 

[Mil – really? I thought you moved to Lamy?] 

Oh maybe it was originally Mont Blanc and when I lost it it was too expensive to replace and so it became Lamy.