Pointy Finger

Eight Fingers and One Thumb.

When I was 14 in a high school in India, nearly everyone took at least a year of typing – we were offered two.  This meant entering the Stronghold of No-Gum-Chewing Mrs Hardiman who had brutally painted the keys of the Remington 16s with deep red nail varnish (polish). In order to identify which key tapped what, we had to sit up straight, hands on the keys, looking at the massive cardboard chart at the front of the room, and learn to type by feel, not sight.  Oooh, that was so cruel!  For which I have been grateful to her all my life.

The fun in class was when Mrs H put on a record, a march, and would announce “if you can type to this, you will be doing 16 words a minute.”  Being a musician, I enjoyed typing to music. I think, however that the sole purpose was not the fun, but to learn to type evenly, encouraging each key to hit the paper in turn, rather that two landing simultaneously. 

By the time we were 16, all term papers had to be typed, double spaced, and if we wanted a copy we had to use carbon paper and “onion skin”, its thin transluscence picking up the words from the carbon between it and the paper receiving the striking keys. 

I truly cannot thank Mrs H enough.  Learning to type by feel meant copying easily, eyes never leaving the parent text.  It offered many part time jobs.  It got me through University without having to pay a typist.  Moreover, when I was teaching Adult Literacy, I could empathise and encourage the speaker face-to-face as he recounted a story from his life, never told before.  My fingers would click away at his words.  Then, I would whisk the paper out of the roll, and hand it to him.  It was wonderful to see his look of astonishment as he saw, for, the first time,  his very own words in print.

I was thoroughly convinced that everyone should learn to type.  When I was a Community Education Manager in a secondary school I tried to persuade the headmaster to make typing a mandatory course for high schoolers.  I didn’t win.  He believed that only those wishing to be secretaries needed typing.  Hmmmm.  [Author’s note: when the computer arrived on his desk, he used the Hunt and Peck method, and probably still does.]

This was the age of the Electric Typewriter.  A super whizz-bang of a machine that left you breathless in its speed.  Unlike the deep pressure needed by the Remington keys, which eventually caused Ultimate Backache (if one were writing the school newspaper), you barely touched the key and it had already imprinted.  Mind you, one needed to be careful when bending over the keyboard (especially women) because leaning on it could cause all the keys to fly up at once. 

At this time the arrival of the computer was supposed to be THE THING TO ANSWER ALL NEEDS.  Of course we weren’t trained in it.  I used to go down to the nursery to learn how to click on stories of The Three Bears, to gain courage to face this big beast in my office.

The computer suddenly transformed our lives.  Knowing how to type was a step ahead. We had to be responsible for our own leaning. I heard the story of a high-ranking military official who went to his office one Monday morning only to find that his whole typing pool of qualified secretaries had disappeared.  In its place, on his desk, was this bulky big thing called a pc.

Two Thumbs

Then came the advent of the Mobile Phone.  The letters were so arranged that I became proficient at sending texts with my two thumbs.  Not quite as quickly as using 8 fingers and a thumb, but quick enough for an occasional message. 

BUT…

And then, and then the mobile phone changed.  Goodby to the recently-learned two-thumbed job.  Now it dwindled down to one index finger on tiny tiny letters.  By this time, folk were starting to disregard their computer emails (still 8 fingers and one thumb) in favour of this mincey terrifying object.  Concurrently, my phone’s keyboard regularly changed position so that I never knew where A was. 

It is a cumbersome learning experience.  Eyes glued to the tiny little letters, tinier than a kernel of corn. Erase erase erase, no I didn’t mean heave, I meant have. And then AI would intervene: No, I didn’t mean it’s, I meant its, yes I really DID mean its. Stop changing it back. Full concentration was needed for the letters themselves.  Now – what does the script look like?  Correction correction correction. 

All that training wiped out, reduced to ……

One…..

Single…

Pointy……

Finger.

Is this progress? 

Cheese Toastie

Inspired by Katie Quinn’s Cheese, Wine, and Bread, I’m on a delightful learning adventure of British cheeses and an explosion of taste sensations.   To make a good cheese toastie, says Katie, use good quality bread, and good quality cheese, and make it like this: 

A big frying pan.

Melt butter.  Lay 2 slices of good quality bread mirror imaged, in the pan.  (Mine was homemade oat bread.)  Over low heat start the undersides to crisp up as you put your favourite melting cheese on the bread. Cheese can be grated, shredded, or sliced.  (I used Lincolnshire Poachers and Kirkhams Lancashire.)  Cover.  When the cheese is melted, very carefully put the slices together.

Verdict:  The outside crusts – I’ve never had them so crisp and delicate and soggy-free.   The cheese monger suggested that two different cheeses would melt at different times, and she was right.  In future, I think I’ll stick to a single cheese for each sandwich.

Now, folks. What do you think? What are you dying to put between the cheeses:  thinly sliced sauteed mushrooms?  Toasted almonds? Sliced olives? Mustard? Mayonnaise? Tomatoes?  Yes, possibly for supermarket cheese.

But actually, these high quality cheeses were so good, I don’t think I’d add anything more.

Comments on last month’s blog,  “Creativity’s Power”.

I was delighted to hear from you!  One reader asked: is that “Creativity is power”, or is it “the power of creativity”?  Certainly the answers revealed both.  Readers reported changing their donations over to the Arts, saving cash for street musicians, and wonderful comments on creativity itself:  “creativity fuels resistance, belongs to everyone”, “the joy itself is an antidote to what our leaders are trying to do to our society”. “A psychotherapist exhorts us all to do one creative thing a day for psychological health.”  “Each sentence we speak is an act of creativity”.  “Well done, Hildegard, you absolute legend”.

Thank you all readers! It is so exciting to hear from you!