The Power of the Pen

The full impact of the revelations of our writing teacher, Mrs Marshall, only began to sink in when little groups of boys gathered on the lawns at break time to discuss what she had just disclosed. A few thought it a good idea, others were thoughtful but non-committal, the rest were dismissive. The more we discussed it, the more we saw it as a crude attempt by the school authorities to disarm us. After all, the little wooden pens with replaceable nibs, and the paraphernalia like ink-wells and blotting paper that went with them, were also extraordinarily versatile weapons. The pens could be thrown like a dart and would easily stick into any door, ceiling or desk. With the right diameter of bamboo cut from the garden, and with the appropriate piece of blotting paper wadding, they made excellent blow-pipe darts. Blotting paper wads could also be chewed in the mouth, rolled into little balls and laid out to dry along the depression at the front of the desk that held the pens. When dry, they could be fired from a piece of elastic stretched between the thumb and forefinger like a catapult, or dipped in the ink-well and flicked off the thumb in a curving arc like a mortar.

I was eight years old when Mrs Marshall drew a diagram of the new-fangled technology on the black-board. She told us that great strides had recently been made in the manufacture of moulded plastics and that Bakelite, with which we were all vaguely familiar, was now a thing of the past. It was the moulding of new forms of plastic that had facilitated the invention of a pen without a nib. It had a small steel ball instead of a nib, she said, to disbelieving giggles. Not only that, it carried its ink inside it in a plastic tube and did not have to be dipped in the ink-well every few seconds, nor did it require blotting paper. Our class had been selected to try out the new pen, she told us proudly. As soon as the new ones arrived from England, our old wooden pens, spare nibs, ink-wells and blotting paper would be removed.

This was the alarming news we all discussed at break time on the lawn that fateful day. It was soon apparent that there were three schools of thought - hawks, technocrats and doves. The hawks thought we should resist the new pens by messing up our writing so that the old ones would be reinstated. The technocrats were thinking of the diagram Mrs Marshall had drawn on the black-board. They wondered what would happen if the ink tube of the new pen was laid on the desk with the ball pointing up the slope of the desk and its rear, open end, folded over and sealed off. Surely, they argued, if it was then whacked with the heel of a shoe the ball would fly out of its socket like a howitzer shell followed closely by a jet of ink. That, they thought, could be better than anything in our current armoury. The doves, who included pacifists, argued that the war with authority had already been lost the day Mr Barnard joined the teaching staff and we should capitulate at once.

Mr Barnard, as well as joining the teaching staff, taught us games and in his spare time played cricket for the local provincial team. Mr Barnard was a strict disciplinarian who brooked no nonsense from pen-wielding dissidents and, to our great dismay, he had the weapons and the delivery system to enforce his will. He could throw a piece of chalk so hard and so accurately that it unerringly hit its precise target who was instantly reduced to a blubbering heap of tears.

Inevitably, the doves, Mr Barnard and Mr Bic prevailed and the world moved on.