I’ve always liked typewriters. I remember watching the BBC adaptation of My Family and Other Animals from 1987 and watching Lawrence Durrell setting up his travel typewriter in front of a window with a view in the latest of the family’s houses to write, and imagining that that could be me.
We did have a typewriter in the family. It was an old, basic one with a missing Q key and a dodgy ribbon that belonged to my Dad. I did type some little things on it, but it was the classic one (or possibly two, on a good day…) typing… it would be years later before I finally learnt to touch-type and then it would be on a computer keyboard rather than on good old-fashioned typewriter.
This story on the BBC website about Keira Rathbone, the artist who makes pictures with a typewriter, made me fall back in love with typewriters all over again…
The artist who makes pictures with a typewriter
It’s a highly impracticable love though. As has been well-documented elsewhere in these pages, I don’t even write my stories on a computer, but long-hand with pen and ink, so what would possess me to even attempt to write a story on a typewriter. But when has a writer ever been practical about these kind of things? It certain didn’t stop me googling, and a short ebay search later, finding this beauty to drool over…
