General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Tom

I was part of that generation, the school provided the pens, which were just a stick with a sharp nib on the end and a white ceramic inkwell in that round hole in the desk, or were they white ceramic inkpots and the inkwell was the hole in the desk? and they came along with blotting paper, and the ink was that awful dull drab colour, and the nib was as yoo say a very scratchy affair and that was during the 1960s.
But the school allowed you to use your own pen, so for Crimble you got a pen set, and if you were posh you got a Parker Pen Set and the other half decent Pen Sets for sale in places like Smiths were Platinum Pen Sets and you could have a Fountain Pen or a Cartridge Pen, and you would use Quink for ink, which was a nice bloo in colour, and the result of using a decent pen was remarkable, it really was better than that school provided stuff and towards the end of the 1960s, and because all the kids were using their own pens, they stopped using the school stuff unless you had no pen of your own.

Paper Mates came out later, which we weren't allowed to use and when I went to the Deanery, it carried on with that writing had to be done using a pen and ink, but after a year or two they started to allow ball points to be used, as long as they were decent ball points, BIC pens were frowned upon, but it depended which subject you were doing, English Language and English Literature still had to be written in pen and ink