A dead ringer for a calligrapher

My iPhone packed in a few days ago. One minute it was working, the next it wasn’t.

I tell a lie. Technically, it was working, because I could hear it ringing when someone tried to call me. And I could hear my various notifications arriving with a ding. But I couldn’t see anything, because the display refused to light up. The black screen of death, the Google doom-mongers called it. I didn’t like the sound of that.

I referred to dozens of YouTube videos, all offering the same few suggestions on how to fix the problem. Following their advice I pressed various buttons in various permutations. But although this technique worked successfully for the YouTubers and their many followers, my screen remained stubbornly black.

I hadn’t realised how dependent I was on the phone until I was denied access to everything that was on it. News headlines, train timetables, diary appointments, weather forecasts, football results, texts, photos, camera. I couldn’t even make an old-fashioned phone call. Everything that made my life worth living was suddenly inaccessible to me, and I felt empty inside. I was lost without my phone, and I wandered aimlessly around my home. My mood dipped, my temper was frayed at the edges. I had only been phoneless for a few hours, but already I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

Every ten minutes or so I pressed the phone’s home button, just in case it would miraculously perk up. I was in denial, acting out Einstein’s quote, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. You never know, I told myself. But, in my heart, I knew.

Early the next morning I took my iPhone to the Genius Bar of my local Apple Store for advice. Julie, the young assistant who was allocated my case, was amicable. She put me at ease with small talk.

“Are you going anywhere nice after this?” she asked me, while performing a diagnostic check on my phone.

“I’m actually going to a local university to write names on parchments,” I told her.

She looked at me blankly.

“I’m a calligrapher,” I explained.

“Oh… a calligrapher?” She regarded me with the same curiosity that she might normally reserve for a fossil. I think she was surprised that people in my line of work still existed.

“I tried calligraphy once,” she said, frowning. She raised her hand and performed a little air-writing in the space between us with her invisible pen. “It’s harder than it looks,” she admitted.

I didn’t bother revealing that, having taught calligraphy for three decades, I’d heard those five words repeated by almost every student I had ever taught. Sometimes by people I hadn’t taught. And each and every one of them wasn’t wrong.

“Do you have hundreds of names to write?” Julie asked.

“Actually, only a few,” I replied. “I’m inscribing the names of the recipients of honorary degrees. There aren’t many of those.”

“Do you mean famous people?” she asked.

“Some of them are famous. Not all.”

“What famous names have you written?”

This was becoming a proper little interrogation.

I attempted to remember famous names that I’d written, but my mind had gone totally blank.

I suddenly remembered someone. Someone relatively famous. Someone who would surely impress Julie. What were the chances of me remembering this particular person while sitting in an Apple Store? The only problem was… although I could see the person’s face clearly in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t remember their actual name. I wasn’t oblivious to the irony.

I threw it out there anyway.

“A few years ago I inscribed the name of the guy who took over from Steve Jobs,” I said.

“Tim Cook?” she proposed.

“That’s him,” I replied.

I was confident that Cook’s name would excite her. After all, what were the chances of Julie, an Apple technician, sitting here in an Apple Store checking the Apple iPhone of the guy who wrote the name of the Apple CEO on an honorary degree parchment? That was a lot of Apple in a very small space. A cartload of Apple. The odds of such an occurrence must be millions to one. Even I was astonished at the serendipity.

“That’s interesting,” Julie said, although I could tell that she didn’t really think it was. Her focus remained on the diagnostic screen.

“Ahhh… your phone’s display needs replaced,” she suddenly said, moving away. “Wait here and I’ll get a price for you.”

She returned a few minutes later. I doubted very much that, during her absence, she’d excitedly shared my Tim Cook revelation with her colleagues around the water cooler.

“Fitting a replacement screen will be £159.00,” she said. That includes a 90 day warranty.

After recovering from the shock of the quote, I was tempted to ask for a discount, since her CEO and I shared a (some might say slight) connection.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, reclaiming my useless phone.

By the time I reached the store’s exit I’d already thought about it. So I walked around the corner to a small phone repair store and requested a second opinion.

“It’s £70.00 to replace your display,” said the assistant, “with a twelve month warranty.”

It was less than half of Apple’s price, with the bonus of an extra nine months warranty.

“I’m happy with that, Tom,” I said, reading his name aloud from the tag around his neck.

Tom was friendly enough while he took my details, but he didn’t share Julie’s love of small talk. Unlike her, he didn’t ask me if I was going anywhere nice after this, so he never found out that he was fixing the phone of a calligrapher. Consequently, I never discovered if he’d tried calligraphy once and realised it was harder than it looked.

“Come back in an hour and your phone will be ready,” he said.

I did. And it was.

I picked up my phone and pressed the home button. The shiny new screen lit up and its brightness comforted me. As I pondered which app to open first, I felt a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

My phone was fully functional again. And so was I.

****************

I have no affiliation with the phone store that repaired my iPhone, and it’s not my intention to promote it. But, for anyone who’s interested, the company is called SimplyFixIt. I can honestly report that the technician there did an expert job of giving me my life back.

****************

For the technically-minded, I hand-lettered the Richard Branson quote in the artwork above using a black Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen with a hard tip. I scanned the black lettering into Photoshop, made the background transparent, and coloured the lettering white. I applied a subtle drop shadow to the lettering before layering it in front of a digitised watercolour wash. Finally, I saved the artwork as a JPG.

Is that an ampersand, or a wee fat man carryin’ a tray?

I was recently asked to teach calligraphy to a group of elderly women. They belonged to a morning club and were working their way through two-hour taster sessions of various crafts. Calligraphy was next on their list, and I had been given the job of promoting it.

The class was due to start at 10:00am, but I arrived early to familiarise myself with the venue. I also wanted to familiarise myself with Jessie, one of the club members, who (I’d been told) had a reputation for being a bit of a handful.

“Watch out for Jessie,” my supervisor had warned me. “She’s 94 years old and only five foot tall, but by twenty past ten she’ll make you want to scream.”

I shrugged off the threat. My supervisor was surely over-reacting. How much of a handful could a 94 year old, five foot tall woman be?

At 10:00am I was prepared to begin my introduction, but the class members were nowhere to be seen. The sound of raised voices led me to the kitchen where I discovered Jessie accusing her fellow club members of fiddling the tea fund.

“It’s 28 pence short,” she alleged, “and naebody’s goin’ anywhere tae the thief owns up.”

I offered to donate 28 pence of my own money, a small price to pay to get the calligraphy lesson on track, but Jessie casually waved away my benevolence. It appeared to me that she was actually enjoying the conflict. Eventually, at her insistence, enough short change was plundered from various pockets and purses to make up the shortfall.

The lesson was further delayed while we all waited for the kettle to boil. I got the impression that the group members wouldn’t function properly until they had a mug of steaming tea at their lips. Eventually, at 10:15am, with the PG Tips poured and the Jammy Dodgers and Chocolate Digestives distributed, I introduced myself and explained the aim of the class.

“Any questions?” I asked, when I had finished speaking.

A single hand shot into the air.

“Yes, Jessie?”

“Can you go over a’ that again, son,” she said. “Ah didnae get it… mibbe because ah forgot tae turn up mah hearin’ aid.”

“What in particular didn’t you get?” I asked.

“Whit is calligraphy again, son?”

I glanced at my watch.

“Calligraphy is fancy writing,” I said, dumbing down for the sake of efficiency.

“Well, ah dinnae really fancy doin’ fancy writin’,” Jessie replied. “No really mah thing, is it? But you’ve selt yerself well, son, so ah’ll gie it a go.”

Having gained Jessie’s consent, I drew two parallel horizontal lines on the whiteboard, guidelines that would contain the letters I was about to create. I heard murmurs of discontent and turned around to see Jessie shaking her head in frustration.

“That’s nae use, son,” she complained. “There’s too much reflection on the board. Yer wastin’ yer time cos all ah can see are two lines.”

“That’s because I’ve only drawn two lines,” I replied. “There’s nothing else on the board to see.”

“Well, mibbe it’s mah cataracts, son, but ah can assure you ah can only see two lines.”

Unfazed, I constructed a few calligraphic letters between the lines.

“Can you see those letters, Jessie?”

“Whit’s that squiggly thing?” she asked.

“That?”

“Aye, that.”

“It’s an ampersand.”

“Whit’s an ampersand?”

“It takes the place of ‘and’.”

“Well why no jist write ‘and’ then?”

“Errr…”

“Anyway, to me it looks like a wee fat man carryin’ a tray.”

In all my years of teaching calligraphy I had never heard an ampersand described as a wee fat man carrying a tray. I considered the comparison awhile, reappraising my ampersand in an attempt to see what Jessie saw, but I was flummoxed. I cocked my head, this way and that, but failed to see either a wee fat man or the tray he was carrying.

“Dae ye see him noo, son?”

“Errr… actually, no I don’t.”

“Ah can see it,” said a voice from the back.

“You can?” I asked, incredulous.

“So can ah,” said another.

I stepped back, had another look at the ampersand, but I was at a loss. Gradually, one by one, the entire group confirmed that I had just drawn a wee fat man carrying a tray. I appeared to be witnessing a communal hallucination. In the same way that some people look at clouds and see faces, everyone in the room, except me, was looking at a calligraphic ampersand and seeing a wee fat man carrying a tray.

“Mibbe he’s goin’ up to the bar tae get the drinks in,” Jessie suggested. Going by the whooping and hollering that followed, it seemed like the wee fat man had already served each of the ladies a few glasses of Prosecco.

In an effort to stem the hilarity I handed out calligraphy pens and explained that, in order to achieve thick and thin calligraphic strokes, the pen had to be held at a 45 degree angle.

“Whit’s a 45 degree angle?” asked Jessie.

I drew a simple right angle on the board and halved it diagonally. I indicated the dividing line. “That’s a 45 degree angle.”

“That’s no easy, son,” Jessie said. “Any chance ah could borrow a protractor?”

“The angle doesn’t have to be exactly 45 degrees, ” I replied. “You don’t need a protractor. Just approximate the angle”.

“Well ah’m doing mah best, son, but ah’m finding it awfy complicated. Ah’ve got a Bic in mah handbag. Can ah write wi’ that instead?”

“A Bic will only give you thin strokes,” I explained.

“Well, that suits me son, cos, to be honest, ah’m no that fussy on they thick strokes. Plus, ah can fit more writin’ on the page without them.”

Although I couldn’t dispute her logic, I took time to show Jessie how to hold the pen at the correct angle. Despite her earlier reservations, after a few minutes she appeared to be deeply engrossed in her letter-making.

“So, Jessie,” I said, attempting to win her over, “are you enjoying calligraphy now? It’s quite therapeutic, isn’t it?”

Grudgingly, she dragged her attention from her lettering and stared at me through slitted eyes.

“Well, it was therapeutic until you interrupted me,” she replied.

Again, I accepted that, logically, she had a point.

“I’m going to sit with each of you in turn,” I told the group. “To see how you’re all getting on.”

Immediately, Jessie patted the empty seat by her side. “Sit here wi me, son,” she said. “Ah’m claimin’ ye first. Getting’ in before that lot.”

As I sat, she dragged a hand-made card from an envelope and offered it to me.

“See whit ah made, son.”

She leaned back proudly while I accepted the card and studied it. I expected it to feature a few words of calligraphy, an indication that she was using her new lettering skills constructively, but the front of the card was bereft of text. Unexpectedly, it featured a decoupaged trio of can-can dancers, complete with high-kicking legs and frilly garters encircling exposed thighs.

“Whit dae ye think, son?”

“Very nice,” I replied, struggling to be constructive. “I like the colours.”

“Aye, but whit aboot the dancers, son?” She chuckled mischievously. “Dae ye like them?”

“I do like them,” I said, flushing slightly. “You made a great job of cutting them out.”

She wallowed in my discomfort awhile then, mission accomplished, removed the card from my hand and replaced it in its envelope. By that point I felt like I was taking part in an initiation ceremony of sorts, and wondered how many previous tutors had been systematically deconstructed by Jessie.

At 11:55, with five minutes to go before the official end of the class, I had sat beside every student twice, except for Jessie, who’s second turn I had somehow missed. She stood up, placed her hands on her hips and got me in her sights.

“So ah take it ah’ve forfeitit mah second shot then?” she said, the smell of Wrigley’s spearmint gum wafting on her breath. She wagged her calligraphy pen in my face, as if to say, ah’ve got the measure of you, pal.

I smiled nervously, waiting for her to smile back. She didn’t.

“Eh? Are you tellin’ me ah’ve forfeitit mah second shot, son?” she snarled, chewing her gum vigourously.

“No, no,” I replied, keen to prevent a scene. “I’ll come and see you right now.”

I began to walk in her direction, but she raised a hand, stopped me in my tracks.

“Well, here’s a bit of advice for ye, son,” she said. “If you intend tae get roon everybody twice in two hoors, yer gonnie hiv tae start a bit earlier, aren’t ye?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied, too intimidated to remind her that the reason I’d run out of time was due to her accusation that the tea fund had been fiddled. Not to mention further delay while the kettle boiled.

At midday, to my relief, fifteen elderly women packed away their pens and paper. It had been a challenge, but I somehow made it through the two allocated hours. A few compliments came my way as the women said goodbye and began to file through the exit. I was disappointed when Jessie disappeared without a farewell. I guessed that she had been right after all, when she told me that calligraphy wasn’t really her thing.

She surprised me by suddenly reappearing in the room. I couldn’t help but notice that she’d applied some scarlet lipstick.

“Oh Jessie,” said one of her classmates. “Look at you wi yer lipstick oan. Aye, well seein’ there’s a man aboot.”

“Och,” said Jessie, her unblinking eyes studying me. “That’s jist a coincidence, hen. Ah’m no lookin’ fur a man at mah age.”

Despite her denial, she sidled up to me.

“Ah was just wonderin’, son, do ye dae private lessons in folk’s hooses? Cos if ye dae ah might jist hire ye for a couple o’ sessions.”

“Not usually, Jessie,” I replied. “But for you I’ll make an exception.”

She grinned, apparently happy with my response.

“Ah enjoyed this mornin’, son,” she said.

“I enjoyed it too,” I replied. And I meant it.

Jessie winked at me and walked away.

“We’ll have ye back, son,” she called from the doorway. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“I look forward to it,” I called back. I felt a sense of achievement. It appeared that I’d not only survived Jessie, I’d somehow won her approval.

Screen printing was the following week‘s taster session… I saw the poster as I left the building.

With a view to averting potential damage to the tutor’s mental state, I considered leaving a cautionary note.

Then I decided against it. Jessie should have her fun. Who was I to deny her that?

Ampersand, calligraphy challenge, calligraphy class, calligraphy humour, cpourful character, scottish accent, Teaching calligraphy