Penpushers.

Mrs Frost and myself were doing our usual late night TV viewing last night and early this morning when she pointed out something that I had not previously noticed. That the highly paid and well dressed newsreaders usually have old Biro's sticking out of their top pockets. You might think that such people might sport a nice Parker pen or two, but it seems not.

This then led on to a discussion about pens in general. I didnt know, until last night, that you can get left handed pen nibs, Mrs Frost being a left hander, and we also expressed a nostolgia for the days when you could refill your fountain pen with Quink Ink.

I suppose though, that writing with a fountain pen is now a dying art with the rise of texting and emails. I met my late wife through a penfriend club and actually had to write letters on paper to her and that was as late as the mid 1980's. I suppose that penfriend clubs where you have to use pen and ink have gone the way of the penny farthing bicycle and the usual way of communicating with potential partners is via sites like Facebook and MySpace. We also now seem to have something called Twitter which is supposedly the latest aid to social interaction.

The thing about writing with pen and ink was that it enabled you to think about what you were writing before you wrote it. I suspect that many bad decisions have been made by people dashing off texts and emails without always thinking through the implications of what they are writing. Instant is not always to be equated with good.