When I was a child, at primary school, we were always asked to write about our weekend on a Monday morning. Were you? The Blackboard had the day’s date and the word ‘News’ scrawled on it in thick, white chalk and both were heavily underlined lest we be left in any doubt. The book in which we wrote was, invariably, a yellow covered exercise book. The pen we wrote with, varied from year to year. Hence, first efforts were in the thick black charcoal pencils that our stubby fingers could grasp more easily, while later efforts were produced with fine nibbed fountain pens that tended to leak in one’s pencil…