Dad waxes lyrical about the Biro

FAMILY HISTORY(to be proofread)

Biro. The bloke whose pens changed the world.

Dateline 

According to this story in Readers Digest Classic Reads 2015, Biro invented the pen that Bic and Biro made a fortune with.

As a 7 yr old Bonnybrig Primary School, student, we were used to filling up ink-pots in the morning from a large clay pot of ink . The quill we used was steel attached to a wooden stick about 4-6 inches long.

At each days end the leftover ink in the pots was returned to the main container and the ink-pots washed out for fresh ink the next school day. 

The process was messy what-with the spilled ink on fingers, desks, paper, not to mention the possibility of getting the Taws for self destructive punishment. 

At that time, just after the end of WW2 in 1945-Scotland til well into the 1950s things were fairly austere, what with the Suez Crises and, off course, the Stone if Destiny  repatriation back to Scotland, with armed police not seen since the end if WW2. 

As wains, we didn't know how austere,  as parents just went about their business of making do as best they could. Stoic, is hardly the word, when I look back. As a parent in a more 'luxurious' environment, I take my hat of to that  generation of parents who  experienced 1914-18 World War 1 as wains, then the Great Depression  in the 1930's and then the1939-45 WW2

As a wain, born 1943, and then a mature age student attending Denny High School  Biro pens were expensive, but 'a had to acquire' necessity. Ink pots were still the go at high school. And until I started my time as a Metal Fabricator/Welder  at the Chattan Foundry and subsequent Falkirk Trades Centre down in the Bainsford Trades School,where I studied Sheet-metalwork,  prior to changing to the new Falkirk Technical College next to the ice rink, pencils were still very much in fashion at work and study

The old pencil still is used, but the Digital Age now writing this is such a major innovation where I type out this story using the side of one finger.

We may have had transitions from inkpots to internet but our fingers still do the 'writing' until electronic speech   Comes along. 

'Writers' translate the guid auld Scots Language intae the world language of 'nae mare inkpots'  

Geordie Ellis of Gateside Avenue, Bonnybridge  ore 1963 when my wife, Ellen and I migrated to Sydney in 1963.

Whilst I value the the Biro, the Scots language still remains the same. 

Cheers from sunny Oz. Jan 2016