Saturday 16 March 2013

A Stationary Love...


            Have you ever, gentle blog-reader, found yourself in one of those giant stores that caters for offices?  Have you wandered into the aisle that's lined with paperclips of every hue, size and kind – striped, plastic-covered, metal, circular...  Little pots for holding pens.  Bulldog clips!  Transparent folders.  Box folders.  Folders with clips.  Folders – sorry, I have to wipe drool away – with a metallic sheen, in silver, green, purple, blue. 
            There are those little round paper rings for reinforcing the hole in the paper that fits into folders with ring-clips.  Is there a dynasty somewhere, grown rich on the manufacture and sale of little sticky paper rings?
            Envelopes of every colour and size, padded and unpadded, self-sealing and ones you have to lick.  Pens!  Oh, the pens.  I hardly ever write with a pen anymore, but oh, the appeal of the pens.  Roller-ball, felt, glitter, calligraphy... With special nibs!
            I don't think it's just me, or even just writers.  Not long after I first met my partner, I asked him for a lift to a big stationary store, so I could bring home some heavy boxes of typing paper in his car.  In the store a sort of rapture came over him and he drifted from aisle to aisle, examining paper and card of different weights, storage boxes of every kind for storing every kind of thing, rulers, compasses, calculators, coloured inks, ledgers, portfolios (WITH AND WITHOUT INNER POCKETS)...  In a dreamy, wondering voice, he said “I didn't know places like this existed...!”  Yet another benefit to him of knowing me.  And soon he was returning reguarly, alone, to look at the big set-squares, the highlighter pens and the wall charts.
            I've have other friends, quite unconnected to writing, to whom I've said, “I just need to nip into the stationary store...” and they've been visibly thrilled.  “Oh, I'll come in with you,” they've said, a little too quickly and eagerly.  And once through the doors, they've slipped away to finger the mouse-mats and the desk-tidies, perhaps bought themselves a new pencil or a block of post-it notes in that hard-to-come-by shade of chartreuse, which will make them the envy of their work-colleagues.
            Why do office supplies have this allure?  Where's the evolutionary basis?  In all essentials we are still, we're told, the hunter-gatherers of the Ice Age.  It makes sense, then, that the sight of three red deer stags picking their way past me to reach a river should rivet me to the spot.  But why does a fixture full of envelopes, with or without windows, in buff, cream or white, have the same effect?  What would Ice-Age man do with envelopes?

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi

I was a full time musician in an earlier life. Try to get me past a musical instrument store!

If you love reading (or writing), then a love of the raw materials is understandable. Why do we put so much effort in to mimicking paper backgrounds etc on e-readers? Also as children, we often had our first steps toward literacy with a crayon and a piece of paper and even if we only scribbled.

Shared experience ? That's how our brains are wired. Look at the video-link on this webpage for some thought provoking stuff - http://manxman.ch/moodle2/mod/resource/view.php?id=133

manxli

Joan Lennon said...

Worship them, perhaps?

Anonymous said...

Oh and BTW,

talking of early years shared experience, I still can't pass a model railway shop and even at 58 years of age!

:o)

Anonymous said...

Padded envelopes,turned inside out so the bubble wrap was outermost, and stitched together with sabre-toothed cat gut(sorry Blott) could make an excellent neolithic anorak - or a duvet for those frosty nights in the cave.

Judith Key

Susan Price said...

Made me LOL, Judith!

Jen Alexander said...

I thought it was just me! I had an hour in Plymouth last week and two things I needed from M and S - got diverted by all the temptations in the Paperchase window,and that was that.

madwippitt said...

LOL. Nearly as compulsive as bookshops ...

Hope Blot is OK and not trapped in the attic?

Jan Needle said...

ah, but don't you just ADORE the smell of a Kindle? er...no

Penny Dolan said...

How could you? Living in a town with several shops* that sell stationery, I try not to go through their doors.

And then the paper sits there, and you haven't actually written any words on it, and the folders have not by themselves tidied the office, and there is never a notebook of just the right weight to take on the holiday or size for the bag AND the zillions of words you might write . . .

Stationery is a lure and a distraction!

Penny Dolan said...

Ps * = Sorry for long sentence. Could not bring myself to write the words "stationery outlets".

madwippitt said...

Spot the stationary stationery ...

Anonymous said...

Carrying on with the music, it's not only about paper

See http://www.manxman.ch/moodle/

Sorry for the play on words!

Manxli

=Tamar said...

My husband once told me that he had finally identified my vice, and it was paper. But hardware stores are just as bad or worse.

Katherine Langrish said...

Can I come, Sue? Yes - I adore stationary. Those thick, blank, smooth wads of paper - those pristine noteboooks - those rolls of golden sellotape - those shapely erasers with that clean, dusty, new mushroom bloom... Mmmmmmm....

Susan Price said...

Steady on Kath!