Anyway, Geo. White was a shop I spent a lot of time in. In fact, I shocked my family once by saving up my pocket money until I had five shillings and spending the lot on a really nice block of paper I found in there. As a result of the fuss made about this purchase, all the pleasure I might otherwise have felt each time I used a sheet of the paper was blotted out by guilt.
All of this is by way of saying, 'I love stationery'. And it is because I love stationery that I have been worrying about its future in what promises to be a largely paper-free world. 'What will become of paperclips?', I've been wondering (although I was cheered by an article in praise of them in one of the papers recently) and 'Will pencil sharpeners like my trusty brass one -
(Isn't it beautiful? Strange how I'd never noticed before that it was made in Germany) -
survive?' I'm not sure that I was reassured about the survival chances of pencil sharpeners by the news that this chap had set up in business (he says it's not a joke, but I'm not entirely convinced). I was pleased though to read this hymn to the act of pencil sharpening, printed in November in the Weekend Australian:
(And, before anyone says I'm being an alarmist, I should point out that, according to my favourite pen shop, blotting paper is pretty much a thing of the past.)
