Being a person who appreciates the older ways of doing things I am often curious about how things were done before the tools we have today were around. We can't really go back much further with our straight razors. I don't think anyone here wants to be shaving with sharpened bits of sea shells.

But with pens many of us have gone from the cheap disposable plastic ball point pens and embrased fountain pens. So on a recent trip to Melbourne when I walked past a store sellling traditional paper products I couldn't resist a look. I was expecting to see a cabinet full of new and expensive fountain pens. But there were no fountain pens anywhere in the shop. The shop owner looked down on fountain pens in the same way that most of us will look down on todays five bladed disposable plastic razors.

So before there were fountain pens there were dip pens. Imagine the monk transcribing a book. Dipping the nib of his pen periodicly into the bottle of ink. What I ened up buying was a dip pen and a bottle of ink. And best of all, because it just consists of a piece of wood and a stamped nib it was much cheaper than I expected.

Now that I am back home I have bought myself a journal and have been writing entries in cursive script as an exercise to improve my hand writing. I am someone who is known for illegible hand writing and I have noticed that my writing is so much neater and legible when writing with a dip pen. Even my wife can read my hand writing now.

It seems to be the way, the older way of doing things is often the best.