I can’t recall how old I was when I received one of the most important gifts in my life. All I can remember is that I was sitting by the living room window knelt up to an old, pale, wooden radiogram using the surface as a desk top to rest my papers on. The lid had seen better days, the varnish was blistered from heat through the window during summertime and the wood was soft enough for my pencil to casually leave the odd indented scribble.
I remember the living room and the house that it belonged to and, knowing that my parents and I moved when I was a certain age, I could only have been about 6 years old when this important life changing event happened.
It came as a complete surprise. My father came home from work where he used to assemble farming tractors. Usually, he would bring scaled down toy tractors of their latest models which I loved to play with.
That day however, well, I think the universe definitely conspired.
I didn’t hear my father open the living room door, I think I was probably too engrossed in my drawing; so when he set a large black metal framed typewriter down in front of me I had to wonder, “What is that?”
The smell was the first thing to assault my curious senses. Oil, ink and cold metal with a twang of rust, all mixed together in one sweet aroma of inspiration. The faded intricate lettering on the front of the huge frame read, “Imperial” and the silver coloured metal slider to shift ink colour from black to none to red just begged to be toyed with.
Already, I was hooked.
I wanted to see how it worked and so for the next few hours I studied it inside and out. When I pressed a letter key, where did the keys come from, how did they feel against the pad of my finger and, did they leave an importing of the letter if I pressed harder. When I reached the end of a line and employed the shiny return lever…how did that work? And the sounds, oh how sublime they were to my ears but not so much for those around me!
I could not feed paper through my new contraption fast enough.
The typewriter couldn’t stay on the radiogram however, the sound of the key strikes vibrated through the hollow interior and out of the speakers on either side not giving anyone in my house any peace and quiet. I didn’t care though, I was creating worlds in my mind that ere becoming real through my fingertips and immortalised in ink onto paper. So, my father moved my typewriter up into my bedroom. Perfect! Now I could continue my creations whenever I chose, day or night!
The only problem was that I didn’t have a desk and my bedroom was a converted old box room with hardly enough room to swing myself never mind a cat. My bed was four feet off the ground with a toy cupboard underneath, the glossy white, wooden window sill wasn’t wide enough to support my metal machine and so, the only solution was to set my typewriter onto the top of my wardrobe. I learned that, if I knelt up on my bed and leaned carefully forward, I could reach the typewriter. The best part, the part that really made it all come together was that the side of my wardrobe could be used as a chalk board - much to the distress of my mother. In one day I had created my first writing den. I had my typewriter and chalk board for all of my ideas, always ready for my next ideas to come to fruition.
I forget just how many stories I wrote before I loaned it to my older sister for her to type an essay for school. During her essay writing, the T key broke, flew right off having snapped half way down the long metal stem. I had no idea that could ever happen…but it did. I carried on for some time afterwards. I manually penned in the T with a black ink pen and for a while, that worked well but, as my creations become longer, it become more of a chore look for the T spaces to fill in.
What’s worse is that I returned home from school one day to find my beloved typewriter had vanished from my room. My parents had considered it broken and therefore needed condemning to the scrapheap. I think they were quietly relieved that they would be spared the incessant clickety-clacking and tick-clicking.
If writing was not my passion, I would not have continued beyond this point I feel. Until I was able to replace my typewriter, I wrote long hand on A4 lined paper and spent one long summer holiday writing a story that would turn out to be 549 pages long!
I will always remember my Imperial typewriter and often wonder, but for receiving that gift quite by chance, would I have become the writer I am today…?
I remember the living room and the house that it belonged to and, knowing that my parents and I moved when I was a certain age, I could only have been about 6 years old when this important life changing event happened.
It came as a complete surprise. My father came home from work where he used to assemble farming tractors. Usually, he would bring scaled down toy tractors of their latest models which I loved to play with.
That day however, well, I think the universe definitely conspired.
I didn’t hear my father open the living room door, I think I was probably too engrossed in my drawing; so when he set a large black metal framed typewriter down in front of me I had to wonder, “What is that?”
The smell was the first thing to assault my curious senses. Oil, ink and cold metal with a twang of rust, all mixed together in one sweet aroma of inspiration. The faded intricate lettering on the front of the huge frame read, “Imperial” and the silver coloured metal slider to shift ink colour from black to none to red just begged to be toyed with.
Already, I was hooked.
I wanted to see how it worked and so for the next few hours I studied it inside and out. When I pressed a letter key, where did the keys come from, how did they feel against the pad of my finger and, did they leave an importing of the letter if I pressed harder. When I reached the end of a line and employed the shiny return lever…how did that work? And the sounds, oh how sublime they were to my ears but not so much for those around me!
I could not feed paper through my new contraption fast enough.
The typewriter couldn’t stay on the radiogram however, the sound of the key strikes vibrated through the hollow interior and out of the speakers on either side not giving anyone in my house any peace and quiet. I didn’t care though, I was creating worlds in my mind that ere becoming real through my fingertips and immortalised in ink onto paper. So, my father moved my typewriter up into my bedroom. Perfect! Now I could continue my creations whenever I chose, day or night!
The only problem was that I didn’t have a desk and my bedroom was a converted old box room with hardly enough room to swing myself never mind a cat. My bed was four feet off the ground with a toy cupboard underneath, the glossy white, wooden window sill wasn’t wide enough to support my metal machine and so, the only solution was to set my typewriter onto the top of my wardrobe. I learned that, if I knelt up on my bed and leaned carefully forward, I could reach the typewriter. The best part, the part that really made it all come together was that the side of my wardrobe could be used as a chalk board - much to the distress of my mother. In one day I had created my first writing den. I had my typewriter and chalk board for all of my ideas, always ready for my next ideas to come to fruition.
I forget just how many stories I wrote before I loaned it to my older sister for her to type an essay for school. During her essay writing, the T key broke, flew right off having snapped half way down the long metal stem. I had no idea that could ever happen…but it did. I carried on for some time afterwards. I manually penned in the T with a black ink pen and for a while, that worked well but, as my creations become longer, it become more of a chore look for the T spaces to fill in.
What’s worse is that I returned home from school one day to find my beloved typewriter had vanished from my room. My parents had considered it broken and therefore needed condemning to the scrapheap. I think they were quietly relieved that they would be spared the incessant clickety-clacking and tick-clicking.
If writing was not my passion, I would not have continued beyond this point I feel. Until I was able to replace my typewriter, I wrote long hand on A4 lined paper and spent one long summer holiday writing a story that would turn out to be 549 pages long!
I will always remember my Imperial typewriter and often wonder, but for receiving that gift quite by chance, would I have become the writer I am today…?