I wonder what psychological torment, latent criminality or sociopathic markers a graphologist might identify from examining my writing. The customary simile of an intoxicated spider staggering across the Nile Blue lined paper of one of those large notebooks from Smythson is pitifully inadequate when trying to describe the varied appearance of my, ahem, “idiosyncratic” handwriting style.
Some pages are filled with what look like the loops of an extended spring. Turn a leaf or two and there is a fine display of micrography. My favourites are the pages that make the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró seem like easily decipherable works of realism.
The time has come for me to seek help, which is how I find myself in the basement bunker beneath the Montblanc store on New Bond Street in the subterranean lair of the nib whisperer, otherwise known as Simon Weir, Montblanc’s “senior learning and development manager”.
Weir is the UK custodian of Montblanc’s sacerdotal bespoke programme. The relationship between writer and pen is intensely personal (or, in my case, dysfunctional). Those who want to deepen, improve or actually establish that relationship have to submit to what can only be described as a calligraphical assault course, devised to identify the pen and the one true nib that will transform the act of writing from mere communication into an act of personal expression.
