This year, I intend to at least try scanning typed pages to dump into Scrivener. Otherwise I will have to make words on the Alphasmart – again.. which is cool. It’s almost a typewriter!
Are you Ready to Feed the Rhino?
Writing
Add a twist of lemon
How to write a love letter
The letter predates the envelope so they were still corresponding and I hope, still in love and having marvelllus weekends together. The last pages of the letter are missing – the person who loved Alice so dearly remains a secret. This letter was rescued from a junk shop today. I’ll keep it safe. 17 endearments on two small pages are too priceless to throw away.
tangible type
stops commas question marks
image typed on my Imperial Good Companion 5
haiku typed on my Smith Corona Classic 12
Waiting
When you wish you had a typewriter with you, Hanx hits the spot
Having Earl Grey tea at the Parcel Yard, a converted PO sorting office at King’s Cross train station.
Always carry a letter
I saw this Remington in the window of a charity shop on my way to catch my train from the coast back to the Fens. There wasn’t time to take it out of the window display to test, so I fed a letter from my MP I had in my bag into to the machine from an awkward position and tested / demonstrated the typewriter to passers by. Eagle eyed observers will see that this machine has an American keyboard with a British conversion. Looks like it was last serviced in the late eighties. For £30 it’s not bad, I think I would have bought it if I hadn’t been in such a hurry and if I didn’t already have a house-move to deal with! Anyway, combining two subjects here, I can relate my MPs response to my People’s Vote postcard. Needless to say, I intend to keep up my end of the conversation until that so-called meaningful vote in the House has been cast… 
The fluffy white animal (stoat?!) got knocked off its perch with the carriage return. Oops. 
Book of the Year
Definitely one every person should read. A random find I thank the stars for.
Reading about Reading
It was glorious weather for April last weekend when I was down on the south coast in East Sussex. I spent a couple of hours on the beach reading about reading, and finding myself feeling a little uncomfortable with the realisation that my own ability to ‘go deep’ into a book has been compromised in the way Birkerts describes. The acceleration to my own fractured attention, even when I am offline, correlates to the moment I invited an iPhone into my life last summer. The ambivalence I feel toward this device that is now barely ever out of my sight, hearing, or hand often gives me a headache, often elicits a groan of self-reproval. My preferred writing technology is the typewriter, & my preferrence is to read on paper. I struggle now to achieve this as if it were a challenge and not second nature, and I hate to admit it. But I do see how this little device has changed me, and I don’t want this modification, as Birkerts says in his book.
Thanks to Richard Polt for bringing Sven Birkerts to my attention via The Gutenberg Elegies, another deeply fascinating and insightful book.
Almond blossom
Type The Clouds 