2010 February « JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS

I’ve already written about what happened at Stationery Club, but there are still a couple more things I wanted to say on the subject.

As I mentioned in the very first Stationery Club post, the idea came from @wowser creating the #stationeryclub hashtag on Twitter and me deciding it would be nice to turn it into an actual, real-life club. I bashed out the original post without really giving it much thought, and indeed organised the whole thing without really trying to ensure all of the details were in place. I thought if I spent too long making sure everything was right before announcing it, I’d never actually do it. This way, I committed myself and couldn’t back out.

And so, yes, there are certain things I’d change and will change for next time. Although quite a few people bought and used the Stabilo Bionic Worker, it was perhaps a bit optimistic to hope that everyone who turned up would be interested in talking about the virtues of a single pen for about two hours. Next time, I think the discussion should have a wider focus. “Notebooks” was suggested as a possible topic (Moleskine vs Silvine; plain vs ruled vs squared; spiral bound vs stitched vs stapled).

The choice of venue was based largely on the fact that it’s round the corner from where I work and usually isn’t too busy. It turned out perhaps Thursday wasn’t a great night to pick, and actually, it was a bit busy. So busy in fact, I had to send an emergency tweet telling people to go upstairs (apologies to anyone who turned up, couldn’t see us and left, we were upstairs. Next time, use a bit of initiative).

I genuinely had no idea how many people were coming and sort of expected around half a dozen. Eight at a push. The fact that twenty lovely people turned up meant it was a bit difficult to hear what people were saying; had we the whole room to ourselves (and a gavel), it might have been easier to conduct the meeting. Next time I might book a room somewhere.

There are lessons to be learned and changes to be made, But I’m glad I did it.

I’m looking forward to Stationery Club No.2.

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Well, after not a great deal of anticipation and very little planning, Stationery Club happened. About twenty people turned up, which was about twenty more than I was expecting, so a good result I feel.

The pen up for discussion was the Stabilo Bionic Worker, and I wrote out some questions in my brand new exercise book in preparation:

The Stabilo Bionic Worker is a rollerball, and so the first question I asked was whether people prefer rollerballs to ballpoints, fountain pens or gel pens. This inspired some furious debate with various pen types being described as “scritchy”, which I am assured is a word. Biros were largely criticised, although alternative uses were suggested for them ranging from fake cigarettes for people trying to quit smoking to near-fatal weaponry.

Despite being available in “the four most commonly used colors”, Ryman seem to take a Henry Ford approach to stocking Bionic Workers, with people struggling to find one in any colour other than black. This is not a major problem for me, as I’ve mentioned before, my natural preference is for black ink:

It was also around this time that I switched to black ink. It seemed like a more logical partner for a sheet of white paper. Black and white. Like the words on this page, like the words in a newspaper, a book, pretty much any written material. It added authority to my words, words which needed authority as they had none of their own.

Stabilo claim that the orange rubber casing “brings an end to uniform grey and blue pens in the office”, however, people didn’t seem particularly keen on the colour:

Also, it was pointed out that orange is quite a common colour for pens. Both Bic and Staedtler use orange for their fine line ballpoint pens. A point illustrated by this classic TV advert from Portugal:

I tried singing the song in the pub, but I don’t think I really did it justice.

As a final word on the Bionic Worker, I asked the killer question:

And the verdict of the first ever stationery club was: NOT SURE.

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JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS

Some words I have written about different things.

Monthly Archives: February 2010

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