Fountain Pens: The Slowest Way to Write a Shopping List

I carry a fountain pen. At work. At home. Going out to the shops. Everywhere.

Not for calligraphy. Not for journaling. Not because I read an article about mindfulness and decided to "slow down." I carry a fountain pen because I tried biros, gel pens, rollerballs, fineliners, and felt-tips, and none of them were right. The fountain pen was right. So I kept it.

The thing about fountain pens is that everyone assumes you're doing a bit. Like you put on a waistcoat, lit a candle, and sat down to write poetry by hand. The reality is I use mine to write "milk, bread, eggs" on a scrap of paper to remind myself while I'm out at the shops. I use it to sign drug charts. I use it to write a single word in my pocket notebook because I'll forget it if I don't. It's not performative. It's just the best tool for the job, and the job is putting ink on paper without making me want to throw the pen across the room.

Here's what I mean.

I'm left-handed. The arch nemesis of my fellow left-hand-orientation brethren. When I was in school I smudged everything I wrote, and to accommodate this I've had many handwriting phases in my life. The way I've written with a pen has had more reinventions than Bowie. I can write in practically any hand position, rotating my wrist a full 180 degrees. There's only two things I can't do: write right-handed, or write my signature, which I learnt to do in year six in the writing journey of having my hand to the left of the writing and smudging everything on the line after the fifth or sixth word.

Being left-handed in a right-handed world means I struggle to write anything nicely. I can't cut anything with scissors, and when I play a racket sport it throws the other person off. My dad once said, jokingly, "Left-handed people are a drain on resources. We have to make a separate thing for you to accommodate you." He also said we should be killed off at birth to save on these resources, but again, he was joking.

A biro hurts my hand after a while, applying pressure to get it to look legible. A gel pen is like the happy medium, but it's like they've calibrated that little ball inside to only put down ink at the perfect two-degree angle that only right-handed people can manage. A fineliner, for some reason, scratches in my left hand and writes beautifully in my right. A fountain pen, despite my own prejudices prior to using one, just goes. Smooth, consistent, no pressure needed. I appreciate that for my writing style and angle it shouldn't work, but it does. It floats across the page. You don't push a fountain pen across the page. You guide it. The ink flows by capillary action. The nib barely touches the paper. If you've never written with one, it's like the difference between pushing a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel and gliding on a proper one. The destination is the same. The experience is not.

And then there's the ink.

This is where it gets ridiculous, and I know it. Of all the colours of the rainbow, you have a never-ending catalogue of choice. And what's my favourite? Blue-black. I have spent genuine time hunting for the perfect one. Not navy. Not black with a blue tint. Blue-black. That specific shade that looks black when you write it and blue when the light catches it. For work I have to use black ink. Non-negotiable. But blue-black is my rebellious streak, where officially I'm using black, but I know there's blue in there too. My go-to is Noodler's Air Corp Blue-Black. It's like looking into the deep sea, where that blue turns to a black you'll never see the bottom of.

The pens themselves are nothing flashy. I've tried the fancy ones. The ones that cost more than I ever thought I'd pay for a pen, that come in a box that could house a small rodent. They're lovely, but they're terrifying to use daily, out and about. I have a few I use. A Lamy Safari for work, and a TWSBI Eco with a transparent body so you can see the ink. Piston filler so you don't need cartridges. The TWSBI has an italic nib filled with highlighter ink, which is neither its official use case for the nib nor the ink, but I've adapted it to fit my needs. So when I'm at work I've got a highlighter on top of my writing pen. I carry in my pocket a Kaweco Sport in brass, which I know is probably less practical than their other varieties of gel pen or pencil but again I enjoy it more. It sits in my pocket next to my Swiss Army Knife and my Owzthat dice, and I don't think about it until I need it, which is the whole point.

That's the thing about the right tool. You don't think about it. It's there, it works, you move on. Despite the questions from onlookers who are baffled that someone left-handed is writing with a fountain pen. The Swiss Army Knife doesn't announce itself. My watch doesn't buzz. The pen doesn't need charging. I fill it, I carry it, I use it. When it runs out, I fill it again. The bottle of ink has barely emptied since I bought it five years ago. No subscription. No app. No firmware update that makes the nib slightly worse.

There's a parallel here with the watch, and I know I've already written about that, but bear with me. My watch tells the time and nothing else. My fountain pen puts ink on paper and nothing else. Neither of them want my attention. Neither of them are trying to be something they're not. Both of them have outlasted whatever phone I'm carrying this year. And both of them were choices I made because they earned their place, not because a review told me to buy them.

What I didn't expect was the ritual. Choosing a pen is the same as choosing a record. You don't just write. You pick up the pen, you feel the weight of it, you unscrew the cap, and you start. There's a moment before the ink hits the page that doesn't exist with a biro. It's not pretentious. It's just intentional. You chose to do this with this tool. Not because the app opened. Not because the notification told you to. Because you reached for something and it was there and it worked.

It's also sparked conversations with curious onlookers. Always starting with, "Ooh, I used a fountain pen in school." Letting them try it out and getting stumped at the first hurdle, usually because you unscrew the lid, not pull it. Explaining that yes, they can write with it, because the myth that only the owner can use it is nonsense. The glee they have when they see their writing look somehow better using the pen. The Scousers at work think it's hilarious, which is probably the most accurate reaction. But then they ask to borrow it, and they write something, and they go, "Ah, that's actually really nice." And I say, "I know." And they say, "How much?" And I say, "Twenty-five quid." And they look at the biro in their hand like it personally offended them.

That's mint, that.