Or: Patience, a pleasant surprise and more patience

I’ve finally swapped to the pink ink in my fountain pen which I now realise I bought about a year ago.

It was on my return from Albania and Montenegro that I spotted it in a tiny airport duty free store so naturally, I wanted it.

Money seems to burn more of a hole in my pocket at an airport than just about anywhere else in the world, including at a dive shop and a general stationery store. Knowing this, i know to be careful with what I’m actually buying so it’s going to be something that I’ve either wanted for a while anyway or I know for sure that I would use it.

Pink ink for one of my favourite writing instruments was a no brainer however I thought I should be a bit sensible so I decided to ask a few questions. I’m also aware that some things are no brainers in airports that are questioned multiple times outside of one and this could be one of those.

Turns out they only sold the ink in the bottle rather than in a cartridge.

This doesn’t sound like a problem except I’d already chosen the fountain pen I would put this ink in and I knew that I didn’t own any refillable cartridges for this brand of pen. This obviously led to a follow up question asking if they sold these too.

No, they did not.

So I took a deep breath and walked slowly away from the beautiful pink ink as I was unsure if I’d be able to find this type of ink cartridge in Mauritius. I thought I might find it on some other trip somewhere else.

On my return, I spoke of this ink to quite a few people and kept looking for it in the hope it would miraculously appear.

It did.

And they had the cartridge too.

I’d checked at this store previously and they had nothing but one day, as I was paying for something else, I caught a glimpse of this very same pink ink on the wall display behind the counter.

My questions were answered positively and I walked away with both the ink and two cartridges (just in case I find another ink that I want, I’m now prepared).

This should then lead you to ask “why has it taken you so long to fill it?”.

Good question.

Let me just say that I have a few of these pens which all tend to serve different purposes and I needed to wait until this particular pen was emptying. I briefly toyed with the idea of putting the ink in another pen but that just seemed wrong.

I can be patient when I want to be.

It took ages for the ink to run dry and I think some had set in the cartridge so when it was at this point, I pulled it out and gave it a good wash and finally filled it.

So, here I am, a year later and I’m finally writing a blog post again while also thinking that I miss this style of writing, followed by wondering why fountain pens seem to forever me to write cursive.

Messy, but cursive nonetheless.

And now in pink.

Happy days!


* With thanks to Jake Bugg for the title to this post.