When you've got a writer in your friend collective, you often forget that these creative types actually prefer pen and pad to computers and white screen. You forget that they get giddy over pen barrels and nibs and fluidity and feel and weight and all that geeky stuff. But it's also refreshing to see pens still bringing in the buck.
For the technology technology technology people of our 21st century world, the thought of a pen shop might prove a waste of good space for a city centre, in favour of a shiny new Mac shop, yet it's the refusal to budge that endears me to the Pen Shop.
Walking in to the Pen Shop, you could be forgiven for nipping in and blindly expecting to pay a maximum of about £30-40 for a pen. Yeah that really is not going to happen, priding themselves on retailers of excellently crafted writing apparatus, don't expect to pick up three pens for a fiver. I was mooching for a fountain pen as my ideal gift, and the prices start at around the £40 mark and can go upwards of the £1000 price point.
Best thing to do, walk in, state your reasons for purchase, price point, and style of pen if you know it, let the sales team pull their products and choose your gift to make your pen lover happy. If you're flush on the cash front, then Mont Blanc pens are gorgeous, if a pen is a pen is a pen to you, then try the Parker or Cross pens. But remember folks, if it's for a gift, it's not you that needs to be impressed. Don't take a netbook lover in with you who will utter that they could buy a notebook for the price of a pen...doesn't go down too well... read more