If I could, this Sunday morning, bestow upon one person an award for the most consistent use of fountain pens in “pop” videos, I’d go for the French singer Julien Clerc. He is not new to me, I bought a cassette of his hits in Paris in 1980 and have had a soft spot for him ever since. I’ve got to say he was very easy on the eye, as well as on the ear, back then and the years have not robbed him of his sex-appeal.

Anyway, it has struck me that fountain pens or, at the very least, handwritten notes that look like were done with a fountain pen, appear in a surprising number of his music videos: “Utile”, “Si Jétais Elle”, “Les Séparés”(ah, the fisherman sweaters!). But the greatest of all appearances of a fountain pen is in the video for “À vous jusquà la fin du monde”. If you can track this down, do give it a look because it’s got such a good story, not to mention paper and suitcases which seemingly have no limits. If you use Apple Music, it’s on there, if not it’s bound to be on the YouTubes somewhere.

My cursory glace at the internet has revealed no hints about whether Monsuir Clerc favours a fountain pen in real life, but their recurring appearance in videos and the fact he looks relatively comfortable using them does lead me to conclude that they’re not entirely alien to him. I like to think he’s a bit of a fan of a proper pen and reality doesn’t really have to intrude on that.

My own fountain pen use this week has been very stable: I’ve written consistently with the Waterman Hemisphere/Diamine Burgundy Royale combination and contrasted this with the Namisu Orion/Graf von Faber-Castell Electric Pink pairing. I have enjoyed using this main colour/contrast colour system so much that I’ve decided to do a similar thing through December, but with different pens and inks. Occasionally, for a bit of a change during the week, I’ve picked up my Lamy LX filled with Lamy Crystal Ruby, but not that often and it is destined to be flushed out before I’ve used up the ink. That is because it’s one of the two pens I’ve decided on for my December fills. I have yet to determine which the other pen will be, although I’ve chosen the ink. But wait! Now, like a flash, I have decided which pen it should be and it’s going to look very good alongside the Lamy LX.

So, having decided that I’m going to have a main focus for each month as far as pens and inks are concerned, it does mean that there may have to be refills with the same colour during the course of the month. I’m just about getting to that point with my Rose Cuivre Hemisphere and it occurred to me that if I put in a new cartridge then it’s going to last beyond the end of the month. Pas de problème, as I’m sure Julien would say. I will simply keep the November pens for those occasions when I want to pick up something different, and then clean them out in mid- to late December when I start to think about my pen and ink pairings for January.

I’m going to be returning, hopefully later in the week, though we all know it will probably be next weekend, to one of the things that I’ve mentioned in passing in this post. For now, though, I’m going to cut a length of wool and join it into a circle so I can see if I remember how to play cat’s cradle.

Bon Dimanche, tout le monde!