I’ve just remembered the fountain pens we were given at school. They were Osmiroids and mine looked like this -


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We lined up at the teacher’s desk and couldn’t choose the colour. I remember being annoyed that I got a blue one like this and not a black one. I was about 10, so it would have been 1965.

They had italic nibs, and from that point on we were obliged to write in italic. Left-handed kids got something that looked impossible to operate. We had ‘handwriting books’ with lines like music manuscript. Small letters had to be half the size of tall letters. We started off with zig-zags until we got the strokes thick and thin. I think it ruined the handwriting of most of us.