I’ve been thinking about the answer to a question about the status of ink in western cultures: which is, that it is a medium that has been used primarily for writing, but not for art; and then quickly realising how little we, or at least I, use ink nowadays, the pots of Quink on the desk, the leak of the fountain pen, the inky fingers, the pen now not even being used to sign cheques as cheques have so nearly completely gone out of use. So the question is how that changes the meaning of ink.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Our piano tuner still takes cheques, and a I’ve written two others in the recent past. Will cheques be like vinyl, and return to haunt us?
Maybe. I still like them. Charles
Clearing out the home of my recently deceased 99 year old mother in law all this week & lovely to see fountain pens & cartridges. Alas, no bottles of Quink which always smelled so good.
But enough paper clips to build Boris’s bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland.
Fuddy-duddy that I am, I still pay most bills by cheques, sealing them in the envelopes provided and affixing colorful commemorative stamps, as I’ve done for well over half a century.
Bravo ! Charles
In Germany, where I spend two months of each year, all transactions are done by cash, debit card, or cumbersome electronic transfers. At home in the USA, checks (not “cheques”) still rule. Without checks, how can one tell the difference between wealthy and ordinary people? Joe Pulitzer once explained to me that while ordinary people have folding checkbooks, those of the wealthy are invariably flat.