I’m using a Geha school pen today, a piston filler with a fine steel nib. It’s quite a small pen but it’s comfortable. It’s one of my favourite pens for a couple of reasons. It’s a splendid writer with a good ink capacity and exactly the right size and style of nib for me, and it came from Hilde, an old friend of my mother’s. When she emigrated to the USA she brought the pen with her from Germany. She heard about my interest in fountain pens and gave it to me just before I left for Scotland, so the little Geha made its second crossing of the Atlantic.

This is one of the cheaper Gehas, but they made some quite high quality pens back in the fifties. At one time they were quite a strong competitor to Pelikan but as time passed and the fountain pen market shrank Geha began to have difficulties and the company was taken over by Pelikan.

I read in an online blog that Geha was one of the cool pens to have in German schools in the sixties. It has a little button at the base of the feed which enables an “emergency supply” of ink, enough for another couple of pages. That, it seemed, was highly esteemed by the school students and was enough to give it an edge over Pelikan in the cool stakes.

I agree. Even though the plating has worn off the nib of my Geha, I think it’s supercool.