My Blogging

“If you can read it? If you can understand it? I didn’t write it!” is often something I tell people.

I hand my carer my shopping list, which I insist on doing old-school, and after a polite noise of confusion from them, I tell them their first test is understanding my handwriting.

I haven’t written my blog posts longhand for years. Disappointingly, certain appointments and the privilege of having my mobility scooter motivated me to come home from physio, where I’d had a kip and enough rest that I’d put on some music, grab some medicine — that being coffee — and smash out posts one after another until I’d gotten a few things off my chest or out of my mind. I’d smash out seven or eight blog posts before realising I should probably consider dinner. By then, it would be dark outside.

So, it is to say: carpal tunnel surgery and a trigger thumb issue. Not as fun as that sounds! Now my handwriting is something even I struggle to understand, I will write several words for something scheduled in my diary, so if I can at least decipher one word, I can then work out what the rest of it says.

I had recently been contemplating purchasing a really nice pen, but even that wasn’t going to improve my handwriting. So, what’s the point?

Back in my college days, I had a class every Friday where the whole class would go flooding into the shops to buy the things we needed for a display. In my first class, I learnt that the stuff I had at home was rubbish, so I begged my parents for a credit card. That way, I could buy the things I needed, have an awkward conversation with a salesperson in a department store, take the goods to use, and then return all of the items for a full refund at the end of the day. Clearly, there were weird looks every time and negotiations at every desk I visited.

That first subject was Menswear and Accessories. I got a shirt, shoes, tie, belt — you get the idea. Then for a big hit of bling, I bought a Montblanc pen, a fountain pen. You know the pen was the most expensive item. My lecturer put it in his shirt pocket to save it from going walking. I came in $5 under my credit card limit that day. It all went back undamaged. It is effectively how I got through the second year of my course. It gave my dad a really good credit rating.

Obviously, I didn’t even get to use that pen, but I’ve only seen one Montblanc pen in the wild since then. I set myself a target years ago: if I ever got published, I hoped somebody would gift me a stunning Montblanc pen.

And in recent years, I have decided that I have, in fact, already been publishing via this very blog. So, where’s my pen?

And anything worth having is worth getting yourself, right? But I’ve already signed all the important documents online in recent years, so what’s the point? Then I’d need to get a safe, as pens go walking in my home and I live alone. So, I guess I won’t be getting a Montblanc pen.

A young carer asked me the significance of this particular pen and I explained that it was basically the Ferrari of pens. I had chosen the fountain pen specifically because, in a display, the tip of the pen was big enough to stand out. I did some research recently, and that pen is worth thousands. Ouch!

Won’t be getting that one. Maybe I’ll just go and look at one up closely. Perhaps at an upcoming ladies’ day to the city. If you are too afraid to go look, here’s a link:

terstuck-gold-coated-legrand-calligraphy-fountain-pen-flexible-nib-MB134040.html

I mean, you can’t even see the emblem on the top of the pen in this and it’s gold. Yuck. Not a fan of gold. Full stop.

I mean, it is to say that in the ’90s, an expensive pen was the equivalent of what a $410,000 watch is now. And I think in recent years I’ve upgraded my high-end car reference from the humble Ferrari to the Maserati.

You can have an apartment in most parts of Melbourne, or you can have a Maserati. You cannot live in a Maserati.

I don’t know how I got here. You are very welcome.