My first job was at the age of eight.   It was more of a responsibility than a job, as I was not paid, but I was not a volunteer either.  The requirement was to fill the little ceramic inkwells that were inserted in to the top right hand corner of the wooden desks we sat in at The Kings School, Gloucester. We used steel nibbed, dip pens.  I was very proud of my job and did it with the utmost earnestness and devotion.

I had a long-necked oil can type of thing.  Years later, when I saw movies about American railroads and there would always be a man with an identical container oiling something and carrying a rag and I would say to myself “That’s my ink can and rag”.  I cannot remember where the bulk ink was in the schoolroom.  I just know that the can was full and I went up and down the lines of desks, filling the inkwells to the brim and mopping up any spills.  Some boys had ‘proper’ ink pens, but the majority of us still dipped. Ballpoints were just in their infancy then, but regarded as the end to legible script, so were not encouraged.

Years later, I discovered how wonderfully Dickensian it all was and Dickens himself had been in the ink production business as a child.  We were bonded.