When visiting the Waddington Duck Race, a duck race taking place once a year here in England’s North West, I was happy to see that the bureaucratic side of the duck race was run by Staedtler’s Minerva pencils.
The Minerva didn’t used to be common in the UK at all, but a few years ago it suddenly made it into lots of corner shops.
My employer, a university, also sold it in its shops. Unfortunately, since then the Minerva has disappeared nearly as fast as it appeared.
This made me even happier when I found many of them in the booth where the race tickets were sold (in the cardboard box in the photo above). They were used to record details of participants.
Luckily Staedtler pencils haven’t disappeared. They are still the staple pen of British schools. I hope this will be the case in the future, even after Staedtler’s switch to more Gmelina wood.
I always love your articles. It’s sometimes difficult to comment someting worth saying when everything is said in the blog post, but please continue !
Thank you very much for your kind comment. I’m happy to hear you like my blog.
Very nice scenery.
Can you place bets like on horses? 🙂
Thank you for your comment.
That’s what I thought would happen. In reality it works like this: all the ducks have numbers and you can buy a ticket (£1 for a good cause). Each ticket has the number of one duck on it. If your duck wins you get a basket full of goodies.