Chapter 96: Playing with Pencils
Chapter 96: Playing with Pencils
Keswick to Penrith
The Derwent Pencil Museum is an unassuming building devoted to an unassuming subject. It’s a long low bungalow on the edge of Keswick in Cumbria painted black as if in the constant shadow of the old Cumberland Pencil factory: the far more assuming building that looks over it. My sister, Mum and I went into the museum, bought a ticket and entered through the replica graphite mine.
Sometime in the 1500s, we learned, a tree was blown over by a storm high on the fells above Seatoller in Borrowdale. Funny coincidence, we thought to ourselves, we’d walked to Seatoller the day before. We’d sat on a bench with a sweeping view across the valley but as we got out our sandwiches, a double decker bus pulled up in front. A defiant Taylor Swift in a silver sequinned dress replaced the mountain. She stayed there looking hopefully to the mountain tops behind us, the engine slowly turning. Just as we finished our lunch and got up to walk on, the driver checked his watch and drove on.
We continued reading the display which explained that shepherds had passed the fallen tree and seen in the tangled roots a glistening black mineral. They found their hands blackened at the touch so they began using it to mark the sheep of Furness Abbey, spreading dark smears on the shaggy fleeces. The properties of the new mineral were soon well-known. The crown swept in and plucked ownership of all the mines, carefully managing supply to control the price. Soon the graphite, or wad as it was known, was being used for moulding cannonballs. As gunpowder wars intensified its value grew. In 1650 it was worth more than gold.
Cumbria’s rich deposits of this literal black gold were obvious targets for smugglers. Fiercely protected by the crown’s guards, robbers would sneak into the pipes at night. They’d sell their loot in Keswick’s shady taverns to be transported across the fells to Whitehaven and the Flemish traders. The illegal trade became known as the Black Market.
William Hetherington pretended to dig for copper but had a secret door that led to a deposit. Willy Woodman, known as Dandy Wad Stealer, spent his winnings on outlandish outfits, dressing up in ribbons and tarnished buckles. Or there was Black Sal who’d creep across the open hills to fill a leather bag which she’d empty in a secret deposit by the river.
It reminded me of a story told by a Zambian friend of mine. Some 400 years later on another continent he too had snuck onto a mine, not in search of graphite but gemstones. The mines were British-owned - certain Brits have always been good at claiming resources, and they’ve always been good at keeping others off - and the guard they employed here was called Scorpion. He was known to kill on sight.
My friend Keith had been a rockstar during Zambia’s Zamrock years in the 70s. But in 1977 the price of copper crashed taking with it the Zambian economy and the whole movement too. With no gigs, illegal gemstone mining was suddenly worth the risk. He only did it once, skating onto the fields - they were open mines - to search in the gullies and trenches they frantically dug. He didn’t find any gems, only the beam of the Scorpion’s torch.
Scorpion raised his gun and Keith said his prayers but there was no shot. Scorpion stopped and double took. “Are you from Amanaz?” He said and Keith confirmed he was the drummer and vocalist. Scorpion had seen him play before far away in the capital. They sat up all night together. In the end, Keith went on to sell office furniture.
Black Sal wasn’t so lucky. One night there was heavy rain, the river burst its banks and her treasure was washed away. She became brash and a few nights later the guards caught her, chasing her until she was torn to pieces by their dogs.
We continued through the museum which was little bigger than a town hall. There were videos of pencils being made, long sausages of graphite bending out of a machine and being slipped into trays of Californian cedar wood, covered with another tray and cut into cylinders.
There was a children’s area at the back beneath the butt of the world’s largest pencil, certified by the Guinness Book of Records. Coloured pencils and paper with half-finished squiggles were strewn across the table. I sat down to colour an easter egg. Having just been through the exhibition, feeling the smooth scrape of the pencil on the paper and seeing the response of the lines on the page was strangely satisfying. Raymond Briggs who created ‘The Snowman’ was fond of the pencil museum and used to visit with his mother. He used Derwent pencils to draw his artwork. Mum reminded me how every Christmas I’d sit in front of the melted snowman and cry.
I took a new piece of paper and wrote ‘Penrith’ across it, shading it neatly and drawing a dark outline with a black watercolour. I would need the sign later. We made our way out of the museum and into town to meet Dad. He was in a furniture shop with a red clearance sign slapped on the window. Dad was talking to the lady at the desk who was saying she was sad to see it close. She looked bitter more than anything. It had been open since 1890 but the founder’s grandson refused to pass it on. The lady had supervised the expansion from selling antiques to shipping all kinds of furniture but the old man was resolute. It would close. She gestured to the young staff and said they’d all need to find jobs.
Mum and Dad dropped me on the edge of Keswick near the junction for the A66. I wouldn’t be hitchhiking all the way to London, it was already late afternoon and I had work in the morning. Above me on the hill, I could see the road up to Castlerig stone circle. Above that, the clouds were darkening, solidifying into a mass of moving graphite. I held my paper sign up to the road and smiled.
Soon the rain began to fall. Lightly at first, fine droplets that caught on the ends of my hair in tiny ball bearings. Then it fell heavier. The water seeped into my paper sign making it flaccid. The cars drove past. I blew the rain off my nose to pass the time.
20 minutes minutes later a bus sizzled slowly up the wet road, its windscreen wipers at work. It slowed to a halt beside me. Tailor Swift stood defiantly in her silver sequinned dress looking back over Keswick this time. There was a hiss and the doors creaked open. The driver looked at me questioningly and, this time, I got on.
