[mattlondon]

Yep I remember the same forced fountain pen work too (also UK) and the inevitable ink-leaks in pencil cases, hands, books etc, and the fairly-awful erasers that went along with it.

The thing with the erasers was once you erased, the chemical was still on the paper so you could not re-write ont he erased parts. This meant you had to use the other-end of the eraser pen where there was a special blue ink pen. Often this would then "bleed" heavily (perhaps I didn't wait for the paper to dry?) and never looked the same as the fountain pen ink, so it was hugely obvious where you made a mistake as your normal wiring all looked normal, then you'd get this huge blurry fuzzy blue mess where you "erased" a mistake :-)

[Symbiote]

Maybe it's because someone (grandma?) bought me a mid-price (probably £15 or so) pen at the start of secondary school, but I don't remember that pen leaking. It seems more likely with a £3 thing from WH Smith.

I had the pen-from-grandma until I was about 30 years old, when it disappeared from my desk at work. "Made in W. Germany."