igenlode | Pens and Flowers

I went to Ryman's to buy a replacement filler/converter for my 'spare' Parker fountain pen (the one with the stainless-steel barrel that I had at school, and which I use for writing-while-walking, since it survives being dropped better than the coloured barrels do). Those cheap piston fillers are basically disposable items; sooner or later, the gasket perishes and/or pulls out of the rod, and you get left with a filler that goes up and down but doesn't suck up ink. Which is what had happened to this pen, not for the first time.

I was shocked to be told that Parker are no longer manufacturing fillers (despite continuing to sell bottled ink; how do they expect people to use the ink?) and that the shop had now sold out. I was directed to the neighbouring branch, six miles away, which apparently had one left 'in stock'. A week later, when I had business there and had cycled over, I paid a call on the second branch of Ryman's. They had sold their last filler the day before.

The demand is clearly substantial and any decision to stop manufacturing them bizarre -- as I said, they're intended as disposable items, just rather less disposable than single-use cartridges!

When I bought my new pen a few years ago (a red Parker Sonnet with a gold nib -- I felt I deserved a high-quality instrument when it's something that I use such a lot), it came with black cartridges and an expensive screw converter already fitted. I've never used the cartridges, so I resorted to fitting one of those to my trusty Parker 25 (as I now know it to be -- rightly described here as "virtually indestructable"!)

Since I only ever use this pen for 'taking a story for a walk' these days, and rarely manage to write more then a hundred words or so in that process, the problems of an almost-empty cartridge aren't too significant in this case. (Normally I would refill my pen before starting a major piece of writing; the advantage of a filler is that it doesn't have to be empty before you can replenish the ink.) However, I did some research and discovered that the converters are still readily available on eBay, so decided I'd better buy one. I went for the more expensive screw converter, on the grounds that it's less messy to use (requires less force), holds more ink and lasts longer -- and if I need to, I can use it to replace the existing screw converter on the Sonnet, if and when that goes.

(I never have had a screw converter wear out on me; the only time I had to buy a replacement was when I sent my old 'good' pen off for repair, and it came back without the filler!)

Top: cheap plastic piston filler
Bottom: screw filler (larger capacity, more expensive mechanism)

The Virginia stocks on my windowsill are coming to an end, and I've been weeding them out. I've also been removing the alyssum plants after the first flush of flowers has passed, since I now know that if you leave them they will happily flower from side-shoot after side-shoot and fill the entire tray from a single mature plant... and I had lots of seedlings!

The mysterious plant that looks like basil undoubtedly is basil. And the feathery things that have grown tall but still haven't flowered are suspiciously reminiscent of fennel -- could that packet of "Little Miss" assorted flower seed possibly have got mixed up with their packets of assorted herb seed?

The big fleshy leaves (that haven't flowered yet) seem to be tobacco-plants, though I sincerely hope they don't grow to the size of the ones in the garden. And the rather finely shaped one with little dangly white flowers with yellow centres is apparently some kind of Solanum -- it looks just like the pictures on this page. It will be interesting to see if it grows black berries!

The fern-leaved thing that has sat in the tray without growing much (or flowering) for two years now is probably a yarrow. Still no idea about the spiky-leaved one that has been clinging on by the skin of its teeth (with the new shoots perennially dying off) since last year. There was a pretty little miniature poppy which flowered and died, unfortunately probably not setting seed; I think the dry seed case is empty.