Writing's on the wall

WHEN was the last time you wrote something by hand? Something meaty, weighty, enduring.

Can you remember? Don't be alarmed if you can't; a new study says the typical adult hasn't scribbled anything down for almost six weeks. We're increasingly using keypads and touch phones to convey messages; address books are disappearing; birthday greetings are emailed. Is handwriting going the way of tying shoelaces? A study by online stationer Docmail found the average adult last wrote something by hand 41 days ago, and one in three hadn't had a reason to write anything "properly" for more than six months.

Coupled with this is a dramatic decline in quality. My own writing's now somewhat tramp-like - scruffy, bitsy, blowsy and understood by no one, including yours truly. Ideas are jotted in a notebook but the hand's barely legible. I'm ashamed, especially when thinking back to the rigorous cursive script of my convent school days - a hand as beautifully starched and neat as a wimple.

My sons learnt a lovely cursive script in their London school, yet that discipline doesn't seem to be enforced here. They're back to printing. Does it really matter if that's what works for them? Will future generations barely use a pen and paper at all (let alone shoelaces)? Will they forget how to write?

But there's an opportunity here. If you want to give pause, be noticed - write by hand. And this is where another recent phenomenon comes in: sales of fountain pens are soaring. Parker, proud manufacturer since 1888, says there's been a worldwide resurgence over the past five years; rival Lamy says turnover increased by more than 5 per cent in 2011. Yet figures for ballpoints are stable. Why? Possibly because they drive us bananas. In supermarkets the stationery section's always perused - favourite bit by far - the pens scoured, searching for that elusive keeper. Oh, the frustration. They're either too light, too spidery, hideously scratchy or run out too fast. So many just feel cheap, ephemeral, like they're not trying hard enough.

Then there's the fountain pen. I've had my old Waterman for years. Bought from the most sublime of department stores, Bon Marche in Paris, which feels fitting in that nation of readers who haven't yet embraced the e-book with the vigour of other countries. Beatrice de Plinval, from jeweller Chaumet, writes entirely in sepia ink. Fabulously glamorous - but where does one find said ink in Oz?

There's something deeply pleasurable about my black-lacquered Waterman. I love the solid click of its lid, as satisfying as the crisp snap of a 1950s handbag. Love its weightiness - it purrs reassurance, respectability. The pen slips across the page in a velvety glide, giggles away from me - and makes me want to write more, more. It doesn't snag or catch or scratch at the paper, its design is ingeniously enduring, it's cheap to run. Then there's the tobacco tin it lives in, a history of a writing life in that battered box. Bought while fleeing a traumatic jilting several months before I was due to walk down the aisle, my heart a howl of grief. I'd jumped into my old Holden ute and headed back to the place I loved most fiercely - Alice Springs. Stopped at a junk shop in Broken Hill and picked up this tin, the beautifully exact length of the pen. It's lived snug in it ever since, along with the writer's tools of red pen, pencil and rubber. Just the act of opening the box is pleasurable; there's a little stirring of aaaah, now I'm doing what I really want to do.

It feels like handwriting's becoming more exclusive, personal, treasured in this fast, throwaway screen-world. The cherishing of fountain pens is a lovely adjunct to that. As we left London for good, my eldest son was given a smart silver pen by a mate. Both their names are engraved on it. It's a keeper, that one.

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