Being expected to write with a nib and ink cartridges was a revelation to me! The pens come in such lovely colours and designs in France too ! It’s a joy choosing pens in the supermarket !
Yes, cartidges were a great invention… the joys before such modern stuff… having to fit the steel nib to the wooden “pen” and dip said nib into the inkwell set into the desktop… 
and try not to drip/splash the ink… on its way back to the empty page…
I always fancied being “ink monitor” but never reached such a high status…
and at Christmas, a treasured gift might be a propelling pencil … that was an amazing invention…
Yes those lovely wooden desks with all your school books, pens and perhaps a few marbles underneath the desktop. A REAL desktop 
I am afraid I may be too young for ink monitors. Did they go round the classroom to top up inkwells ?
Do they still make blotting paper ? What is a propelling pencil ?
Which leads me on to …I can’t get it out of my head, one of my recent experiences in France (hence my ‘attitude’ of France as an adult) was being shouted at by a woman cardriver “Eh La VIEILLE !!!” Should I start a new topic here ?
It’s a slim metal cylinder (sometimes silver) designed to mimic a pencil. At its “sharp end” the tip is hollow, allowing the gradual extrusion of a thin column of graphite like a pencil tip. The column of graphite is concealed in the cylinder, and emerges when the end of the ‘pencil’ is rotated, thus propelling the graphite forward to enable writing, or drawing. It obviates the need for pencil sharpening and, because the tip can be withdrawn (when not needed) by rotating the tip counter-wise to propelling it forward, it can be safely stored in an inside pocket with marking the fabric of the wearer/user.
Propelling pencils were usually equipped with a clasp at the end opposite the ‘business’ end. This clasp allowed the pencil to be anchored inside a pocket for easy access, with the clasp visible if the pocket was outside and visible, notably the “breast pocket” .
Propelling pencils had a certain brief fashionability, suggesting status amongst the intelligentsia or business classes. The clasp usually bore a symbol, or was of an iconic design, of which the Parker pen flèche is perhaps the most memorable.
©Gobbledegook 2020.
7th
Gracious Peter… I’m talking about my modest, early childhood… in the 50’s… when parents/uncles/aunts got together to ensure all the kids got something at birthday and Christmas…
I know the ones you press the button to expose the lead. I saw those for the first time in France too. I prefer them to pencils, as they are much cleaner, but I expect the lead is in a limited range of hardness ? i.e; good for technical drawing but not for artists ?
where some of us learned to suture 
When I worked as a dental nurse, it used to amuse me from behind my mask, watching dentists , who didn’t routinely need to use sutures., fumble trying to sew with tweezers and suture needle (Shhh, don’t tell a soul)
Those ‘tweezers’ are suture (or “rat-tooth”) dissecting forceps and are necessary for tying off very fine sutures especially in inaccessible places where fingers can’t easily go, like gums.
“Rat-tooth” because the had two fine projecting “teeth” on one tip of the forcep, and one 'tooth" on the opposing tip that fitted between the other two. Like a rat?
The forcep itself was very fine, and well-suited for catching and securing a very fine thread.
I gained some proficiency in Casualty suturing during my second year of nurse training in 1957 where minor injuries were dealt with by nurses, usually cuts and gashes from bike injuries, sport, or fights. .
We agree on that, Stella! Propelling pencils were pretty expensive, and a bit of an adolescent stage-point especially for boys, marking responsibility, studiousness, a certain seriousness of purpose expected of the recipient, recognising the value of an object not given as a toy, and a status-marker. All very significant in the 1950s, and chronicled in "The Uses of Literacy’ (Richard Hoggart, 1957) of which I had as a spotty yoof à well-thumbed copy when it came out. I also read the :New Statesman and Nation’ too! A hugely important era in our common history. 
I think I got my first one at about age 7… and I recall using it all the time… since I loved writing… I kept it safely in its flip-top box in between times.
Monetary value would not have meant anything to me in those days… it was simply the right tool for the job… that’s what counted.
and… homemade presents were the norm… so this PP was doubly amazing… 
(naturally us kids did not learn/understand about finances and struggling families until we were much older… it is only looking back that we can fully appreciate what our families did for us)
I had a tiny purple mother o’pearl-effect fountain pen made by Conway Stewart which I LOVED. I didn’t realise it was tiny until much later because when I was given it my hand was tiny too.
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I think that gifts to children do, or should, sometimes have some value as social stage-markers, as your pp did in your life. I would guess that the adults who gifted the pp to you recognised à maturity and a concern for and interest in others beyond your tender years, and their gift acknowledged that.
I received when I was 9 or 10 à gift from my father’s youngest brother, my uncleHarry, who was in his early twenties himself, a box of tubes of oil paint. I can recall the look of them, and their names, and the box in which they were arranged like a jewelled necklace. Although I had no idea how to use them, I ‘knew’ deep down that they were portentous, an acknowledgement of a quality in me, or a talent, that I was yet to discover. I have never forgotten the gift, or Harry, although we seldom met, and he died of lung cancer in his late 30s.
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We’re on a roll here, Peter… with our memories…
I remember so clearly “yearning” for something in the local toy shop… and my parents gently saying that I must wait and see what Father Christmas thought about it…
We all wrote our letters… and I was hoping against hope… … can’t remember what FC actually brought that year… but, disappointment at not getting what I had asked for…
was overthrown by the delight on seeing the little bolero which my gran had knitted for me… with ballerina’s on it… (I was into ballet, albeit totally hopeless)
I knew just how much she hated knitting, so this was a wonderful gift … and I found it again, when clearing our house, before we moved here… brought back so many memories. 
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I do wonder what others think of this nostalgia 
is it or 
or 
or just “hurry up and 
” ? 
who cares… we’re not being argumentative or confrontational… and there will be others with fond memories …
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I said to the doctor, “You’re not very good at this, let me do it.”
He said, “Suture self!”
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