I wondered if it was a non-British method.
You should see my handwriting (or maybe you shouldn’t!).
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My current “stable” includes pens from TWSBI (the Diamond 580 ALR), Monteverde, Nahvalur (pronounced “Narwhal!”) - see example below - and some Chinese cheapies.
None of them were more than £60 IIRC. I have mostly swapped out the nibs for broad nibs as I found fine/medium a bit scratchy and thin.
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Your post prompted me to Google ‘contemporary fountain pens’ and this came up first - very interesting
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A while ago I realised that Watermans suited my hand and I liked the look of them. I have a couple of Lamys too, but they’re a bit chunky.
I inherited a Parker Lady but it’s a bit too small. I could never manage a Mont Blanc!
There was a period when using a fountain pen was compulsory at school. TBH I loath the things for personal use - give me a £5 parker with a standard medium ballpoint refill and I’ll be happy.
Oh dear. If I one day see you in Figeac when I’ve found a cheap enough set of wheels I’ll tell you what I have.
Do you at least have the Lamy Pico in the lighter chrome? The imperial is my cheque pen. There was a pink one about too that I missed.
They do take some getting used to, it is a different “feel” compared to a roller ball or fibre tip - especially if the pen has a lot of what the trade call “feedback” (resistance as you move the pen).
See also my comment on nib width above - thin nibs seem to be scratchier, though some folks prefer them.
Plus I’ve found you really need to write on decent paper - the stuff in normal notepads isn’t smooth enough.
You’re far too young, I’m not sure when Mr. Biro invented his pen, but certainly I never saw my first
ball-point till well after leaving school. And like you, I was pleased as Punch when I discovered it. 
Of course, only the ‘posh’ boys had a fountain pen. The rest of us had to keep dipping a spike into a little pot at the top of the desk, not quite a quill, but not far advanced from one. 
In the 1960s and 70s the desks still had the inkwell but without ink. Pupils were required to provide their own pens, the wealthy children having cartridge pens and the poor bottled ink and blue fingers.
You have reminded me that I can’t ever remember who kept those little ink wells topped up. I was never an inkwell monitor, and I don’t know anyone else who was. Eeerie. 
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As a left hander I suffered the childhood trauma of compulsory fountain pen use once I got to grammar school. To avoid smudging I adopted the hook hand style (now made famous by Barack Obama) but that drew the ire of certain school masters who disliked the slope going the opposite way to the majority of the essays they had to mark, & my efforts were fairly illegible anyway.
I finally got permission to use a biro, so was able to not use the hook hand, although I used to alternate just to annoy people. I also occasionally used purple biro, claiming it to be blue.
In time for my O levels I discovered left handed fountain pen nibs, which probably helped with the legibility of my exam papers & avoided any resits.
When I was 20 I had a bad RTC & ended up in an orthopaedic ward for a couple of months.
The stage lighting job I had just prior to that accident needed the various tips, tricks & cue sheets involved written in a form that could be passed on to my successor, but one of my injuries was a smashed left elbow & broken ulna which prevented me from writing with my natural hand. Luckily I was sufficiently bored to laboriously do the whole process writing right handed…
My hand writing has always been terrible, & I avoid it apart from notes to myself, which it turns out only I can read.
I had to learn italic with a wide nib held at 45 degrees. Useless if you want to write fast.
Don’t know if its because I’m left handed but I have always written in capital letters.
Played all sports holding equipment in left hand except a cricket bat which I used right handed.
The best part of being in the construction industry was to team up with a right hander which made a dream team.
Good job you don’t have to write here then, that would be shouting. 
I wouldn’t have got away with that at school but in later life I somehow drifted into that habit too. I now find joined up writing to be a real trial.
I blame a lifetime of needing to clearly label equipment & cabling.
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Cursive script fell out of fashion for a while in the UK, and it’s a pity, since for taking a lot of notes on a daily basis eg in a lecture, it really is much quicker and less physical effort. Obviously if writing by hand isn’t something you have to do a lot of, it doesn’t really matter.
I think how one is taught to write and how much time is spent on practising is very important - I have a left-handed cousin who writes with his hand hooked around , his writing looks jagged and painful and full of tension because it is, it’s a real physical effort. Yes he earns his living by writing.
In contrast my left-handed daughter was taught to write with the paper offset at about 45 degrees and to the left of an imaginary central line up the desk - she writes in cursive legibly easily and without any difficulty even in fountain pen.
From my children’s experience much more time was spent on letter formation in the UK than in the GS/CP in France, but this is anecdotal evidence, and not a like with like comparison.
My father (an electrical engineer by training) mostly wrote in caps as though labelling something - as indeed he often was. His hand writing came from Germany and Austria, and I found that I copied some of his letters and numbers unconsciously, but retained the shape later quite deliberately.
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That is a brilliant idea and I hadn’t thought of that before. I tried just now and demonstrated it to Christelle (interrupting her mopping around me 
) who is ambidextrous and, because of a recent injury to her right wrist, is writing with her left hand at the moment. Obviously her right is the dominant and ‘normal’ one for her. She writes from below with her left hand.
I tried the same trick but from right to left but the result wasn’t good. 
Whenever anyone right handed passes me anything to sign I have to rotate the item 90 degrees in order to achieve that magic 45 degree angle in relation to myself. It still raises eyebrows until the moment I put pen to paper.
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ChatGPT was very helpful, and nice, almost human!
I like to write, I’m trying to write, and I’ve been asking ChatGPT for general advice about the English language, about books and authors, and so on, over several weeks. A couple of days ago I asked ChatGPT if there’s a more appropriate word to use than the word I suggested within the context it was written.
The answer was helpful and I typed “Thank you”.
I received an immediate reply – "You’re welcome! Let me know if you need more help. Good luck with your writing!”
He, she or they, or it, guessed I’m trying to write, and said so!
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