Friday 21 June 2013

The Staples in Life


The first known stapler was
handmade for King Louis XV
I’m worried about the future of staplers. I admit, I haven’t given mine a great deal of attention over the past few years and should have shown greater appreciation for its capability and reliability. Quietly it binds clumps of unruly papers together with little complaint and, despite a bent staple in need of extraction with the help of some long scissors occasionally or the odd stapled finger through particularly ambitious attempts at multi-tasking – but we can hardly blame the machine for that - it never goes wrong.

I fear the humble piece of paper will disappear from our lives and what then the use for a stapler? I’m typing this on my pc. I could have done it on an iPad, a tablet or even a phone. What I haven’t done is written it out on a piece of paper first and this from someone who likes nothing more than the feeling of pen making marks on a blank page. If even notebook hoarders like me are using paper less, surely its days are numbered?

And then there’s the pen. Unsurprisingly, as the owner of multiple parker pens, (each refill capable of writing 600 metres of characters, apparently, or 500 of mine, my writing being particularly large and ever more illegible) I don’t want to see them go. Where are they currently made? I have visions of a hive of industry of Charlie and his Chocolate Factory proportions bubbling and fizzing away to bring us this simple contraption. And I wonder if these factories will be turned into flats.

Will print presses go the same way? Will the printed book cave under electronic pressure and the paper versions be confined to the shelves of nostalgic old relics like me, secretly leafing through the remains of the towering To Be Read pile under the dead of night, the guilt of the trees slain for their production weighing heavy?

If the printed book goes? What then of book shelves? Granted they take up a huge amount of space, particularly for those of us who feel the need to keep a book which will never be revisited, just-in-case-someone-wants-to-borrow-it (I never read a book twice, I have too many in my TBR pile for that), but used books to me are another person’s ornaments. They’re not entirely necessary but the sight of them all lined up, the colour they add to the room, the enjoyment I associate with reading, makes me smile. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes a house a home but without the spines of books representing the worlds I’ve frequented and those where I’ve yet to go, mine would feel like something was missing.

If I took the stapler, paper, notebooks, pens and books from my study, it would look like this: 

Yes, I know it wouldn’t need dusting but I don’t do too much of that anyway. Yes I know other things would replace the missing items and I dare say I’d become ridiculously attached to those, too.

But I don’t want to.

I want a world which doesn’t need to be re-charged, which can’t be accessed with such ease that it becomes acceptable to make notes whilst supposedly also in conversation. I want a world where my children talk to their friends on the bus rather than watch YouTube clips on their iPads, where they listen to the teacher in a lesson rather than message their friends in another class. I want a world where you can eat supper and have a drink with friends and nobody feels the need to check that somebody more interesting isn’t texting them or worse, that they’re missing something at work. I want a world where people go on holiday rather than, ‘will be contactable via email’ so that they and their family life returns fully refreshed.

I’m still clinging on to most of that so, for now, I’m Celebrating the Small Things. I’m celebrating the fact that the stapler is still regularly brought out of my drawer.

25 comments:

  1. Fantastic rant. I'm with you all the way, and it's not just staplers and pens, what about paperclips and pencils? There's a pencil museum in Cumbria, maybe I ought to visit it now before it's too late.

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    1. Yes Charlie! And highlighter pens and pencil sharpeners and post-it notes and ... the list is endless.

      By the way, you must go to the pencil museum. I've been twice, I love it!

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  2. A great post. Writing can be so cerebral that it's good to celebrate the tactile nature of the things that surround us. But I can feel the books on my TBR pile scowling at me!

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    1. Thanks Derek and nicely put - re the tactile nature off-setting the brain ache - I hadn't really thought of it like that. Funny picture of the scowling TBR pile but I know exactly what you mean :)

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  3. Staplers are wonderful...as a health service worker who deals with tons of paper every month (most of it which has to be duplicated and filed) the stapler is an essential part of my job.
    Otherwise there would be paper-chaos !!
    Not quite as fulfilling as the date-stamper (I KNOW I should've been a librarian) but a close second.

    And yes - despite the advent of Kindle / iPad, I love my bookshelf and nobody shall make me get rid of it *stamps foot*

    Fab read as ever :-)

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  4. Date-stamper?Of course, let's add that to the list. Thanks for joining the stamping foot brigade, we WILL resist! Thanks for popping over, Hazel :)

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  5. Isn't it worrying when we begin to sound like our parents, longing for things that are gone (like trolley buses, and spotted dick, and cars with cranking handles when they wouldn't start ...).

    I'd grieve in a world without books - and I wonder what will my grandchildren grieve over, when they're drawing their pension?

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    1. That's what I hang on to, Jo - t'was ever thus. As long as there's still a world for our grandchildren to live in, I'll try not to worry too much. I'm not sure they'll have any jobs though, if the automation continues at its current pace. Automatic tills in supermarkets are my current bug bear on this subject but I'll refrain and go and fetch my blanket, cocoa and slippers instead :)

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  6. Thank you for that ode to the small things in life. Some of the points you mention grate on me every time. What will become of humanity if we can't even share a meal without checking what's going on in cyber world.
    Have you watched Star Trek recently? They never do that although they most certainly have the means to. So is there some hope for us? Will we learn to live again in the future? ;-)

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    1. Well, Star Trek has got a lot of things right over the years so I'll hold on to that, Karin! Maybe it will all come full circle, here's hoping. Thanks for reading!

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  7. I love going to a stationery shop. The paper, pens and notebooks are so beautiful. Choosing a notebook is like making a personal statement about how you feel about life. The same with a pen, everyone loves a different kind of pen. It would be a lesser world if we lose those things to our kindles, ipads and personal computers.

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    1. Yes! I'm completely with you B! Maybe there'll be a stationary mutiny, you never know...
      Nice to see you back, Babs.

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  8. I'm going to carry on clinging to the belief that paper and books will survive; and given the tendency for things to be emailed and then printed out in offices everywhere still, I'm confident of the survival of the stapler! I recall being issued with stationary when I started a new job; it included a huge unopened box (could it have been 7000?) of staples which lived in my desk drawer for the next seven years. When I came to clear out on my departure from the company,I discovered that there was only one strip of staples left in the box. It had all been foretold by the great spirit of stationary.....

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    1. ... or a company one step ahead of people stealing items from the stationary cupboard?? That's what I call good planning :)
      Thanks for reading Rowena! Have you done your Liebster post yet? I shall check up on you in a moment.

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    2. You have - chortle chortle!

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  9. Brilliant blog, agree totally with it all. Although I love my e-reader there are some books that have to be well, books. Your friend Jane's book "Rook" is one such, far too beautiful not to be felt in the hand and even sniffed at (!)as you read it. Lovely.
    And another thing, can there be a sadder sight than young mothers pushing prams or push chairs, phones to ear or thumb and child completely ignored? I refuse to act my age and say "what is the world coming to" but it's a sneaky thought in there somewhere! Oops.

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    1. The trouble with the e-reader is that it's like so much technology: you can see the need and the attraction, if only it would nestle in neatly along-side rather than pushing out the old favourites.
      I'd never really thought about the texting pram pushers. I'm glad mobiles weren't widely used when ours were little, I can see I might have succumbed to the odd pram phone call, in aid of 'getting everything sorted'. Phew! The trouble is, these things start and everyone's outraged but then you see it again and it doesn't seem quite so shocking and before long, it's almost normal. Don't even get me started on people getting their phones out when they come to dinner. Herumph!

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  10. Great post. YAY for the stapler!!!

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    1. Thanks Vikki, you can join our stapler and all things stationary club :)

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  11. Your'e so right! Funnily enough i used my stapler a couple of times yesterday and it was very satisfying to have lots of paper being sectioned beautifully in to correct bundles so it didn't all get mixed up!

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    1. It is very satisfying isn't i - the ultimate in orderliness! Funny that you used your stapler yesterday, maybe people do use them more than I thought? Here's hoping! Let the campaign continue. You can join our Stapler Appreciation Society, too :)

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  12. I think paper will be here for a lot longer than you think. I remember when email became common - that was supposed to be the death knell for paper, and what happened? Everyone printed out their emails! Not me, I hasten to add! I love my stapler too :-)

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    1. That's a good point, Analisa. I also hope that non-technological ways of being/ working might become de rigeur again in a few years, like fashion coming full circle. I can but hope. Or get my feet more firmly on board - one or the other! Thanks for reading :)

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  13. We only miss things when they're no longer available. Water for example out here in California.

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    1. Oh dear, Clee, is it bad there at the moment? How do people cope?

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