Ladies and Gentle-wotsits it is my most sad of duties to inform you that after many years of diligent, unstinting service that PaperMate NonStop has ….. stopped.
We first met sometime back in 1986 at a trade convention at ExCel London, I was at College and as members of the IQPS invited to attend. Wandering around the office administration and secretarial ‘services’ (it was the 80’s innuendo abound), marvelling at this new word processing technology that the offices of the day were moving into but our College was not, getting to play with the contraptions of reprographics and binding, there were plentiful mounds of branded freebies and persuaders.
One of the stands was PaperMate to service the secretary with all her scripting need, plus stylish pens for her executive boss as well. I remember the posters of the NonStop held in beautifully manicured figures against the crisp lined note pad and the indecipherable squiggles of Pitman Shorthand (we were taught Teeline which didn’t need lined paper or think and thin strokes). Along with their brochure and a small telephone message pad adorned with their logo and hearts was the NonStop pencil all in a small carrier bag.
As a treasured item NonStop was kept for something special, nestled beside the run of the mill pencils and a few Derwent Cumberlands (the Rolls Royce of pencil, according to Dad). After college NonStop joined the ranks in my home office, where across the past 34 years we have scribbled, ticked, crossed, shaded and drawn countless times. The natty eraser at the end sadly never reached its potential, preferring to leave a greyed smudge across the paper rather than lift the erroneous graphite. NonStop has battle scars, a few scratches and the clip broke off many years ago, but duties were carried out with out fuss or fanfare.
The young whippersnapper from the pen chest has been promoted, it will not feel the same as my old faithful friend, but during these most difficult of times, we must all learn to adapt.
Farewell my ever faithful mate to paper.
Just Me, Nobody Special 
deacongill
March 29, 2020 at 2:53 pm
Awww … RIP. There’s nothing like an old faithful implement which has long held pride of place in our affections.
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snowbird
March 29, 2020 at 8:09 pm
Brilliant you crazy gal!zzz
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daryan12
March 29, 2020 at 9:24 pm
Can’t you refill them? Then not sure where you’d buy the leads, online perhaps?
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AnneMarie
March 29, 2020 at 9:25 pm
No, this one predates refillable ones. I have others that can be refilled, one even has a selection of different colours! 😁
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Renee
March 30, 2020 at 7:53 am
I love you so much. You are crazy. But I know how you feel. My cross pen won’t roll down anymore so on to find another.
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Jocelyn
March 30, 2020 at 9:50 am
I Think you should complain to Paper Mate. Outraged from Norfolk that the Non Stop has Stopped.
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AnneMarie
March 30, 2020 at 10:44 am
Funny you should say that, I tried to find a PaperMate Facebook page and post a blog link 😁
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menhir1
April 2, 2020 at 10:51 am
Non-stop means what…a person’s life span or the pen’s lifespan? I reckon it’s the former. However, having given such generous generational service, you should contact the pen manufacturer and ask for a replacement for superb advertising of their product. It’s the least PaperMate could do! xxx
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AnneMarie
April 2, 2020 at 10:59 am
Lol, I have tried finding PaperMate on social media but haven’t yet.
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menhir1
April 2, 2020 at 12:01 pm
Paper Mate is a registered division of Sanford L.P., a Newell Brands company that produces writing instruments. Paper Mate’s offices are located in Oak Brook, Illinois, along with those of Newell Rubbermaid’s other office products divisions.Wikipedia
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AnneMarie
April 2, 2020 at 12:07 pm
Just found a Facebook page and posted a link to the piece.
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sula362
April 3, 2020 at 7:07 am
34 years is amazing for one pencil. It would have got lost before that if it was mine. Perhaps that is what Papermate were banking on, most of us not being so careful with it.
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AnneMarie
April 3, 2020 at 11:00 am
Daftly I sort of saved it for best, but I am also someone who has several pencils and pens ‘on the go’.
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daryan12
May 11, 2020 at 10:00 am
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
I hope Trump get’s Covid,
And Mike Pence too,
Then again, Boris got it and he still doesn’t seem to get the message about the NHS, so it might not do any good.
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AnneMarie
May 11, 2020 at 1:04 pm
See now, I have thoughts on that ….. not everything is the Government’s direct responsibility, there are those within the NHS who have responsibilities for purchasing and stock, there is the balance between how much of something to keep in stock versus how much is likely to be used, adding in how much is bought that is then thrown away as past it’s useable date and how cautious is that date. I agree the NHS has been grossly underfunded at a day to day level, and under invested with regards newer, larger facilities and equipment by successive governments for the past 40+ years. A cornerstone of that is that the voting public don’t like paying extra taxes, the numbers sound scarily high. It’s not a one stop fault-blame-solution.
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daryan12
May 11, 2020 at 10:41 pm
Think I accidentally put this here rather than the poetry post! My sister works as a doctor in Germany and really, there is no excuses for what’s happened in the UK. Soon as things started kicking off in China, the drumbeat to prepare started. While the NHS is consistently overstretched and underfunded the opposite was true in Germany. They were able to turn over entire hospitals into coronavirus treatment centres.They even flew in patients from other parts of Europe. The statistics speak for themselves.
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