Handwriting | But I Smile Anyway...

Linda’s prompt for SoCS this week…

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “ink.” Use it as a noun or a verb. Have fun!

It’s quite funny actually that this was the prompt for today, considering I wrote about using a fountain pen, or an ink pen, to improve my writing in my post on Cursive Writing the other day!

I have always loved a proper fountain pen, ever since I was given the go-ahead at school to graduate from pencil to the handwriting pens, then onto a proper ink pen!

I loved my first Parker pens and went from the plastic variety to the more posh metal ones. From Parker, we moved onto Waterman pens. And until the necessity of speed in writing, and the more common use of keyboards took over, I took great pride in writing with my fountain pen!

I used the simple cartridges mainly, but I even went through the stage of refilling my pen using the traditional bottles of ink… in the classroom!

Oh, the messes we made! Ink splodges decorating not only our fingers and pages, but even the desks we worked upon, and sometimes we were unaware of the dreaded smudge across our faces!

But boy, did I feel grown up with my fountain pen!

I was so excited for Lil Man when he was given his Pen Licence at school (yes they had official documents to say kids were ready to use a pen rather than pencil a few years ago in school!) He drove us crazy trying to find the right pen!

Then, as he grasped the technique, so I learned how fountain pens, and their ink, were probably the bane of my mother’s life. Thank goodness for washable ink! The splodges that I had coveted, on what I call my Writer’s Lump, on my right-hand middle finger, my callus developed from excessive handling of pens, were not as welcome when they were gracing the fingers of my own child!

He prefers a rollerball now. (Thank God!)

But still, I do love a good ink pen!

Nowadays, in my fast-paced life, it’s not as often as I like, that I sit and craft letters on a page, creating a thing of beauty, rather, a rushed scrawl which I often have trouble deciphering myself!!!! So, excuse me if I am a little rusty, but here is an example of my handwriting! It’s still not as great as I can usually do it, but it’s better than when I use a biro!

My most recent pen acquisition!

Happy Saturday Peeps!

Curse the Cursive!!! #ThrowbackThursday

We have a new handwriting policy at school, and it means we need to model what we would like our pupils to achieve…

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the way cursive writing looks, it was the handwriting we learned at school too, but over the years, my handwriting has evolved into its own style… A sort of semi-joined formation, depending on the occasion, but it does seem to change, depending on the pen I’m using too. Big, small, straight, slanted, you’ll find them all in my writing over various books!

Being at school means we need decipherable handwriting, so on white boards, and in books, children can read what we have written with ease. I have worked hard at getting my printed handwriting to a great standard for these occasions… It lapses back to my usual spider scrawl at other times.
I love the neatness and conformed sizes of many of my colleagues writing, and aspire to write like them all the time… Now we have to change it!!!

What takes me 10 seconds to write usually is taking me 2 minutes, as I forget to start at the line, and when I use my own doctored joins, I have to re-write them… the correct way!

I need my fountain pen again I think. I’m sure I was much neater with that!