Remember those ‘pencil’ cases or boxes we used to cart around from class to class? Clamped somewhere between a folder, your body and your arm, a limpet at your side  angling for the next class. You’d get a pencil out, in its red shining glory and discover the nib has been nipped off in transit, so you hunt down the bottom of the case for a sharpener. Insert the blunted end and turn and twist violently to get the  tip back to porcupine sharpness. On the page the dark grey lead bleeding out until you made a mistake, then it was more fumbling in the sack for the eraser. Funny I seem to see reams of figures in my mind so we must have used it in maths – though the old ball tip was the other option – but no rubbing out that one? Weren’t there pen erasers too? They seemed to be like sand paper- liquid paper I think was another option, with its oxyacetylene ketones giving you a high for the lesson if you weren’t careful!

The pencil in hand usually a HB with red body and black banding at the top would happily scratch across the page, in a class of 25 or so  it was like a prayer convention sometimes, these pencils whispering their desires to heaven  while the children prayed they were writing something the teacher might want to read. When stuck for an idea a quick chew on the end  and the taste of flaky paint helped.  In art class the more creative types were able to conjure worlds beneath the tip of the implement, shaded with various grades from double B to HH.

These days I rarely encounter one, maybe when I’m marking a piece of wood to saw, just a dumb thick pencil for that job. Or maybe it’s penciling in an idea or a future date with someone, can’t say there’s one in the draw. They just seem like such ancient technology now what with iphones and tablets and netbooks etc it’s easier to type isn’t it? Though there is something about that sensation of a pencil in your hand and the magic of the printed word…..