Lucky 7

Despite spending a considerable amount of time in front of a computer monitor every day, I still regularly put pencil to paper. I take notes, sketch out ideas or simply doodle. My instrument of choice is a mechanical pencil.

For the past couple of months, I have been (passively) looking for a new pencil. Unfortunately, it seems that most stationary shops do not stock decent mechanical pencils any more. They are either pretty flimsy or just plain ugly (often both).

Yesterday while running errands, I passed another stationary shop. Not expecting too much, I went inside to have a quick look. To my surprise, they had a wide range of mechanical pencils. Most of them were ruled out straight away; WAY too expensive. However, they also had some decent looking and affordable pencils from a German company called Lamy.

I tried out a couple, and found one that felt right. As I was leaving the shop with my purchase, a street musician was playing one of my favourite Neil Young songs. I felt like a lucky man. When I got home I saw that my pencil has a '7' on its clutch-cap.