I am writing this with my mother’s pen. She is slender, and very small, marbled green and brown and cream. I call it she because on top of the cap, which you have to fit onto the other end of the pen to make it long enough to write with, on this cap is a round ivory-coloured head, big-eyed, bobbed-haired, wearing a little flat black hat. Her face, with its two red spots for cheeks, has the knowing innocence of the twenties. Around her middle is a tarnished filigreed belt. Being a cylinder she has no waist, but that’s the right shape for the period.

The nib has a slit in it, which ends in a hollow heart, and on it is written Peter Pan. The ink bag must have perished; it’s no longer a fountain pen. You have to dip it into an ink bottle. I saw Elizabeth Jolley doing this in a film about herself once. It’s not much trouble, and lasts through a lot of words. The letters flow in rich blue-black lines; the slender flapper who forms them writes with a bold spirit.