it is a constant source of anxiety and expenditure (but the two often seem connected) to me that i, a moderately well-adjusted woman in her late twenties, will always stop to gawp at boxes of colouring pens. it's inexplicable. i don't draw, and even as a child never liked colouring things in. but i like colours, and especially i like colour pens in boxes. one of my fondest memories is of being sent, on my 20th birthday, a large box of shimmery gel pens from kinokuniya, complete with a colour chart on folded card, just like the little cards that accompany boxes of chocolates (in this case each colour named for a flower. bells, i was prepared to marry the man on the spot, i can tell you.)


(see colour chart here)


i think coloured pens are terribly attractive for the way the colours are laid out, reds and oranges on one end and greens and blues on the other, gradations of colours between, and the fact that they are colours, shades upon shades of them collected in one place (the box of my birthday pens, i remember, was pale cream and had sky blue interiors.) i adore looking at brush pens in art shops, and boxes of oil pastels, and the skinny stabilo felt-tips, and those boxes of double-ended colour pencils, in 12s, 24s, 36s, 48s if you're posh, that everyone of us had when we were children. i was barely able to tear myself away from a set of magic pens at sengkang yesterday (popular had a stationery sale) despite the fact that i would never again be using magic pens in this lifetime. they were so glossy, and bright, and pretty, and i'm a jelly-brained ninny, there's no getting away from that. right.