August 5, 2026 - The Derwent Pencil Museum

I came to pencil excitement quite late in life, specifically Tuesday, when we visited the Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick, on our first day in the Lake District. The Pencil Museum is small in size and in subject, one of those perfect niche places. 

There are many things I have never properlyly appreciated about the pencil, but I am now awakened.

One display describes the early days when pencils were made by hand, and when graphite was mined around these parts, at one time becoming more valuable than gold. It made me stop and think about how incredibly convenient things are now, how abundant paper and writing tools are, how easily I can write (or type) anything I want, nearly any time I want. 

(The museum made me remember Percival Everett’s novel, James, where the acquisition of a precious stolen pencil allows James the liberty to tell his story. It’s a paean to literacy.

And then, thinking about how I have - almost - never lacked for writing implements, I recalled my strangest boss, Marcia, Thelma,* who would not allow us a new pen until we turned in our old pen and she verified that it had run dry. It seemed to mirror the wild times when thieves lay in wait for stage coaches bearing graphite, stole it, and sold it on the BLACK MARKET. Hence the phrase: black market!

HOW COOL IS All of THAT?!

[Extremely cool! However, it might not be exactly true. I did a tiny bit of searching, and this particular etymology for "black market" slides off into “allegedly” territory in most scholarly and popular citations.  

{Now I have fallen into the vortex of remembering Marcia Thelma. Talk about “allegedly!” When I write my bestseller, How A Bad Boss Is Worse Than A Bad Boyfriend, she will have a chapter or two of her own.

For instance! At one point, she took me with her to visit an angry customer in Georgia. They were angry because shipments were slow, but angrier yet because we appeared to be shining them on. They had taken screenshots with date stamps to expose this. LOOK! On August 4, we said we had shipped on August 3.  Nothing arrived. Hmmm. They started checking every day. And lo! We kept changing ship dates. Eventually, we actually shipped on September 1. What was up?

I sat there saying: That is so weird, and I don’t understand it at all, and I have never seen it, and I can’t imagine what is going on, and I will look into it when I get home, and I am so sorry about it. All of which was true.

Then they would pull out another example. Oh, god.

Marcia Thelma and I got into the car, and I said What do you think is going on? She said she had implemented these new fake shipping dates in order to hide our enormous backlogs. Clever, no? Most customers – the ones who weren’t watching carefully, like Georgia – might be fooled into thinking there were Post Office problems!

No, she hadn’t thought to tell anyone customer-facing, but maybe that was good, since I had just given a convincing rendition of surprise and bewilderment! Also no, she wasn’t going to stop using fake ship dates. I’d think of something to tell Georgia, right?

(You may be wondering about the strike-throughs on Marcia Thelma. Did you read Nora Ephron’s novel Heartburn? In it she thinly disguises her real ex-husband, Carl Bernstein of Watergate journalism fame, and his very well-publicized affair with Margaret Jay, then the wife of the British ambassador.

Ephron paints Ms. Jay as horse-faced, and awful, and calls her “Thelma.” When asked if she enjoyed portraying her former rival as unattractive, Ephron said not as much as she enjoyed naming her Thelma. I think, in tribute, we should all call our nemeses “Thelma.”)   

In the vortex, I did some rabbit-holing, and it appears that my old nemesis is alive and well. Do me a favor. Don’t forward this to her, okay? I’m looking at you, Pat.}

So if you look very carefully, you will note that in the write-up above, where “black market” is italicized, they don’t specifically SAY that the phrase originated in the illegal graphite trade. 

Similarly, the very long pencil is (allegedly) in the Guiness Book of World Records as the World’s Longest Coloring Pencil. Note the yellow tip. Is there a longer non-coloring pencil? When I think of the Marcia Thelma days, I get all jumpy and suspicious.]

My youngest family member, who learned to read this year, says the best thing about it was being able to WRITE what he wanted, without dictating it to an adult. This too made me think about James, the novel. I recommend it. )

But I digress.

If the above were in pencil, I could erase it.

The absolute glory of the Derwent Pencil Museum was its gift shop, where we went completely nuts. We are now richer in art supplies than we have ever been. However, there were no erasers to be had, because they were out of stock. 

[SEE how easy that was? Just say: Erasers are out of stock! Because it's true!]

I have absolutely no idea.