Do you wear slippers? What kind?
Carpet slippers? Knitted slippers? Furry slippers? Novelty slippers? Glass, like Cinderella?
And if it can be told, how long have you had them – and how are they holding up?
In Praise of Another Old Technology
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… I love the hand-crank sewing machine, fountain pens and candle-lamp; I love the simple perfection of the stick that is the rimu nostepinne. And, it turns out, I love the typewriter.
Proper manual typewriters, that is. None of this pansy give-me-electricity-or-give-me-death stuff. The whole point of the typewriter nowadays is the freedom it gives you: freedom from electricity, software upgrades (or crashes), printers, digital mass surveillance, illegible handwriting, planned obsolescence and blue-light-emitting screens – to name just a few.
And, of course, there’s the sound of typing. Tom Hanks says laptop typing sounds “mousy… cozy and small, like knitting needles creating a pair of socks. [Nothing wrong with knitting socks, Mr Hanks.] Everything you type on a typewriter sounds grand, the words forming in mini-explosions of SHOOK SHOOK SHOOK.”
I’ve been reading the book The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century by Richard Polt, a book packed full of history and helpful advice, along with a horde of fascinating snippets. For instance: the first documented user of a typewriter was a blind Italian countess (back in 1801); you should never use WD40 on a typewriter; and keychopping – the practice of cutting the keys off old typewriters to use for making jewellery – is like “declawing a cat and throwing away the cat.”
There’s also a discussion of different makes and models of typewriters, with mentions of the people who use/d them. Agatha Christie and George Orwell used Remingtons, as did George Bernard Shaw and Margaret Mitchell. e.e. cummings used a Smith-Corona portable (with, one is tempted to speculate, a broken shift). Nick Cave uses an Olivetti; as does Cormac McCarthy, who cannily sold his old one for over a quarter of a million dollars and then replaced it for under $20. Ho Chi Minh used a typewriter known as a Hermes Baby, which doesn’t exactly fit with the revolutionary image.
I myself have a powder-blue Brother De Luxe ultraportable typewriter, which weighs a smidgen over five kilos in its case. It is relatively young, having rolled off the production line in Nagoya in February 1969, and is still in very good working condition. A few days ago I took the outer cladding off to give it a good clean, but that was all it needed, besides perhaps a new ribbon in the near future. I didn’t pick it apart further, because a) I wasn’t entirely confident of my ability to put it back together properly, and b) whoever put those screws in wasn’t messing around (and I have a twisted screwdriver to prove it).
Nonetheless, there is something very capable-feeling about being able to take a machine at least partially apart and then successfully put it back together again (with some assistance from a spare pair of hands and the muscles attached to them). All the more so, as I am not naturally mechanically minded. All I found inside was some gunge and fluff – unlike others who, according to Polt, have found everything from a mummified mouse (minus head) to five hundred dollars to a wasps nest. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
The point of a typewriter, of course, is to use it. It is no longer the most efficient way to produce text, but efficiency is seldom a guarantee of quality. Those of you who are au fait with the modern phenomenon known as NaNoWriMo may be interested to know that there is a group who knock out their 50,000 words on typewriters. One, Mike Clemens, says he’s heard the bell at the end of each line likened to a personal word-count cheerleader – and of course it always helps to be able to see your progress stacking up next to you. (On which note, bring back paperweights!)
My own plan is to write – or at least draft – a novel or play on this typewriter. Not immediately, since I am at present in the midst of rewriting/edits which are best done on computer, but hopefully in the not too distant future. Because I have at last found another phrase to rival the beauty of piston-filling fountain pen: annotated typescript.
In Praise of Hats
I own twelve hats. That should answer any lingering questions you may have as to which type I am. In fact (I have just realized), I have more hats than pairs of shoes. This, despite the fact that like the actress Emma Ishta, “I have a tiny head, which means most hats don’t fit very well. I do love them, though.”
![[ D ] Edgar Degas - At the Milliner II](https://c8.staticflickr.com/8/7036/6858744743_ff2d9de6dd.jpg)
I had thought there was no use loving them – until I turned 21, and had a costume party to celebrate. Since there will always be those who show up without costumes, I did a round of the second-hand shops, looking for random hats to inflict on them. And one of the hats I found actually fit me. It was a small fur pillbox hat – whether it’s real fur or not, I’m not sure. There might be some rather acrylicky beasts out there…
It was a historic moment, for it was not until the Caped Gooseberry’s grandmother passed away that I once more came into the possession of a fitting hat. (Granddaughter-in-law is not usually a direct line of inheritance, but hey, if the hat fits…) She was a many-hatted lady, and I became bounteously hatted as a result.
My favourite of the whole hat inheritance is a soft mossy-coloured winter hat, with a dashing little brim. “Some hats can only be worn if you’re willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you’re only a step away from dancing,” Neil Gaiman wrote in Anansi Boys. This is that kind of hat. I love it.
I also came in for a fine white straw (worn when she was introduced to Prince Charles) and a funky handmade multicoloured ‘safari hat.’ I do have some other hats that fit, but they’re made of wool, which stretches, and therefore doesn’t really count. One is knitted and the other is crocheted, and they were both gifts.
But I refuse to be hampered by the possession of a “tiny wee bonce,” as the last milliner I visited so charmingly expressed it. (No, she didn’t have anything that fit me.) I still own a number of hats that don’t fit – unless I wear a bandanna underneath.
There’s a wide-brimmed black felt; a cheap and nasty sunhat (the only one of my hats I bought new); a brown pageboy cap which gives the effect of a bonnet; an actual bonnet I made from a pattern in Jane Austen’s Sewing Box; and a jester cap (with bells, naturally) that the Caped Gooseberry and I made from instructions in The Hat Book.
The most recent acquisition, however, is a writing hat – a suggestion of Kerry Greenwood’s. “I have a writing hat. It is a tricorne made from an old felt hat I had as a student. It tells me that I am writing, when I am wearing that hat. When I stop writing, I take it off… The hat also tells anyone who drops in on me to go away.” My writing hat is from a second-hand shop (naturally!) and is something I’d never seen before: a wide-brimmed fur. I don’t know what kind of animals the hat used to be; at a guess I’d say rabbit and fox. It’s got a soft dark crown and underbrim, with a big puffy brim of light brown (with white guard-hairs). The brim keeps my neck warm at the back and keeps distractions out of view to the front and sides.
Fur is a contentious subject, I know, but I don’t see putting old furs in landfills as a good solution. I wouldn’t buy a new fur unless it was possum or rabbit (both environmental pests in New Zealand) or otherwise humanely farmed. I do, after all, wear sheepskin slippers (I’ve had the same pair for about fifteen years) and what is sheepskin but a sheep-fur? I draw the line at astrakhan, though – that’s just nasty.
The reason I have chosen to wear this only as a writing hat is, simply put, cowardice. I am nervous about what reaction I might get if I wore a flagrantly fur hat in public. Admittedly, the Internet is very much public, but no one can hurl paint on me over the world wide web. I don’t know why paint-hurlers don’t seem to target those wearing leather hats. Or leather bikie gear. The only difference is that one still has the hair on, and the other doesn’t.
There are undoubtedly evils and abuses in the international fur trade, but it seems to me that the answer to abuses is not to ban the products altogether (excepting endangered species, obviously). The solution is to educate people about the origins of what they’re buying, so they can make ethical choices. We don’t shame egg-eaters, we ban the use of battery cages – and in the meantime, encourage people to buy free-range. Ditto with diamonds and the Kimberly Process (although that does seem to have its issues).
So instead of flinging my warm and elegant hat into the compost bin, I will keep using it as a head-cosy until the chill of winter has passed for another year – at which point I will need to decide which will be the summer writing hat. Suggestions?