Fordyce Maxwell: I still pound the keys when all that is required nowadays is the lightest touch

FOR the fit, active and alert – perm two from three at any given time – seeing part of your past in a museum can be a shock. Never mind can be, it was a shock to see my first typewriter in an exhibition.

But there it was – Olivetti’s classic portable Lettera 22 on which I pecked away at youth club correspondence, concert party “comedy” scripts, young farmers’ club competition speeches, early short story attempts and first job applications.

I started by using tentative forefingers, moving on to the classic thumping journalistic two-fingers long before I became a journalist.

That method, as shown in dozens of films, might have been suited to heavy smoking, hard-drinking, trilby-wearing, journalists – unrealistic, of course, we seldom wore a hat in the office – working on iron-clad standard typewriters, but not on the second-hand Lettera 22 I acquired.

On that delicate soft-touch machine, a couple of fingers moving at speed could, and often did, slip painfully between the keys, bringing thought and composition to a halt with the same expletive.

That was one of the reasons that when I got a job in journalism, having luckily failed an interview for a job as a National Farmers’ Union assistant county secretary, I took a touch-typing course.

At this remove I don’t remember how many weeks it lasted or where the room was in Glasgow or even whether I was the only male, apart from the teacher, incongruously a snappily dressed burly young Glaswegian with heavy rings on several fingers.

He might have had another job as a bouncer, but I never liked to ask. As a typing teacher he was competent, brisk and firm and never had any trouble collecting the weekly payment. What I do remember was the effort needed to move keys that used the little finger and the finger next to it. A working lifetime later, it’s second nature, but it took several months at the beginning to feel comfortable even on the lighter-touch Lettera 22.

There were times during those weeks of classes when I thought of giving up. But there’s always satisfaction in learning a new skill, especially one that made working life easier.

However, there is one bad habit I’ve never been able to lose. It persisted when electric typewriters replaced manual, and when computer keyboards were introduced – the tendency to pound the keys when all that is required nowadays is the lightest of touches.

Small wonder my Lettera 22 didn’t last long enough to appear in a Denver museum. But I’m pleased, shock of recognition apart, that one has. «