The write stuff

Today has been a very nondescript working-from-home day, tiring and with weather that has been wet and drizzly the whole time.  I think my brain was like that today too.  I was thinking about what to blip today and was all out of ideas.  Some days the ideas are Right There, and some days the inspiration doesn't come until the last moment.  Today was a last moment thing, but here we are.

This is my pencil.  There are many like it, but this is mine.  It also spent most of today refusing to work properly so, fearing the worst, I swapped to its newer counterpart.  But lo and behold, it started propelling again this evening when I yanked the end and generally bashed it around a little bit.

What I particularly like is the nib, which is actually not this pencil's original but its predecessor's.  Over the last 30(!) years I have steadily worn through the heavy chrome plating to the brass underneath, so as a point of principle, this is the nib that I'll keep using, when the propelling mechanism gives up the ghost and I swap to a newer pencil.

What I could add is that this pencil, or rather its predecessor, was one of three that I used intensively for technical drawing at university.  The 0.3mm model is good for layout lines but spindly and fragile, so I never use it.  The 0.5mm is my daily driver even now, while the 0.9mm model, that I somehow acquired from Dad, is my favourite for sketching, anything from ideas for workbenches to shelf brackets to even shunpiker logos.