Middleagedad recently had a hankering for an Olivetti Valentine typewriter. He first saw one in an art installation at the London art Frieze fair last year, where the letter keys had all been replaced with just F,U,C and K., but they keep popping up in pictures and magazines (Jamie Cullum writes his song lyrics on one according to The Guardian and Paul Auster writes on one). So he researched and ended up buying two (slightly by mistake, he's a novice bidder) on eBay.
Since they arrived, they have sat on the kitchen table looking very stylish, they are a lovely orangey-red, with paper in each one ready for action and two very surprising things happened. Firstly, teenagesons constantly write little ditties (mostly rude but some are very funny) as they move through the kitchen, they just can't resist tapping away on the keys. Consequently we have sheets of weirdly linked typing that is a snapshot of a mildly dysfunctional family day/weekend. Which is rather nice.
Secondly, we've all gone madly nostalgic for the typing font, how it looks -all irregular inky letters on the clean white paper, it seems textural and interesting compared to the perfect, precision print that we've got used to.
Weirdly, there is no number one, and the capital i doesn't look like a one, so why is that? Anyone know?
Hope your kids haven't been using the F U C K keys!
Posted by: That's Not My Age | January 23, 2010 at 09:54 AM
Sadly, teenagesons can be very creative with their swear words, altho so far have avoided committing anything to paper that's likely to get them a strong reprimand from me. Ax
Posted by: amanda | January 23, 2010 at 10:55 AM
Your readers may find the diagram in the following link useful when describing typewriter parts - http://site.xavier.edu/POLT/TYPEWRITERS/tw-parts.html
middleagedad.com
Posted by: middleagedad.com | January 23, 2010 at 11:19 AM
I remember borrowing Mum's typewriter to type out my thesis. The stress caused by the Tippex paper (snow-pake, or something, was it?) when bashing down the offending key to white-out the incorrect letter, only to get that letter then stuck on the key of the correct one and having to carefully pick it off. Oh, for the 'delete' key then!
Posted by: Jude | January 23, 2010 at 03:37 PM
I think that the letter 'l' - lower case, also does duty as the number 1 on typewriter's of this vintage - seem to remember that from days of using one at work in the distant past. One good thing about modern computer keyboards is that they are a lot quieter than old typewriter's, the clatterof some typists was really distracting.
Posted by: Janet | January 23, 2010 at 05:43 PM
Thanks Janet, and yes the letters are REALLY hard to bash down on, it's takes real determined effort to knock out a word, but it looks very lovely when it's on the page....Ax
Posted by: amanda | January 24, 2010 at 02:27 PM
Use lower case L for numeral one. I'm an editor; still get computer files from older authors where I have to change l to 1 to make sense!
Posted by: Elizabeth D | February 04, 2010 at 05:27 PM