Ahead: A Long Wander in The Eternal Typosphere

My deep gratitude to Winston, Scott, Ken, Richard, Dwayne and Rob for their very kind wishes for my future. Typewriters are bound to play a very large part in it. Maybe I'll even grab this window of opportunity to start The Great Australian Novel, written on an Australian-built Remington portable?

I was especially touched by Richard’s mention of having friends around the world. I take that as meaning people in the Typosphere in particular. In the past week or so, I have felt more and more comfortable escaping back into the world of the Typosphere, sensing it provides me with a sort of cocoon, an entirely safe environment in which one is surrounded by kind, like, sympathetic, souls. Of course, these are people I have never met in person, and yet I feel completely at ease communicating with them. A shared love of typewriters does that. Typewriters and Typospherians have become my security blanket.

I can take out a lovely old Continental portable typewriter, as I did last evening, and type away merrily for hours on end, without a care in the world. I will be doing that a lot more often in the coming weeks and months - except it will be a different typewriter every day.

Wouldn’t it be nice, Winston, to start a typewriter store? One giving assurances about the condition of the machine on offer, and the security of it in transit. One from which the seller doesn’t start the spiel, “Don’t know anything about typewriters ….” I will be selling a lot of typewriters, but am as yet in no rush to do so.

Yes, Scott, this has been a very worrying, depressing period. But now that a decision has been made, I can start to think about getting on with the rest of my life. I don’t reach 65, pension age, for another seven months, but would hope to have better than Mr Micawber’s rate of success before then. As Dwayne suggested, I just have to find a way to land that’s softer than a Royal portable lobbing on to Thomas Fortune Ryan’s Virginia front lawn.

To be perfectly honest, right now I really can’t say what the future holds.

I do know what I’d like it to hold.

But for the time being, I’m still getting used to the idea that in a few weeks’ time, that regular pay won’t be coming into my bank account.

First off, that means typewriter buying will be seriously curtailed.

I’d like to think that, with limited funds, I will still be able to score the odd lucky break – as I did a week or so ago with a gorgeous Como green and cream Remington portable. But somehow I think those days will be few and far between. The buzz is unlikely to sustain me between the occasional turn of such extreme good fortune. The cream of my existing collection will have to suffice.

I am going to let some time go by, shuffle my feet a bit and see what transpires. The last thing I want to do is rush into anything I might regret.

It’s good that I’m not alone in all this. Like so many others, I’m actually better off out of where I work. As some may know, I suffer from bipolar affective disorder, and the prevailing sombre mood, the downcast environment brought on by so much uncertainty, was doing me no good at all. Adding to all that, as Richard mentioned, is the disturbing, frustrating mystery as to why newspapers are being run into the ground the way the are. The future for millions of people who rely upon reading reliable information about the world around them is very bleak indeed.

For the best part of 47 years, I loved my job. I looked forward to going into work, to each day joining a team of fellow professionals, all of us bent on pulling together to produce as good an edition as we could manage. There was always a little office banter to help lighten the load, seldom any real rancour. In the past few months, all that has gone. I no longer enjoy my work. It's time to leave, it's the end of the line ...
I can only take the attitude that those worries and woes are behind me now. With bipolar, I needed regular hours and regular duties in order stay on an even keel as much as I could. But I will also now need to keep myself fully occupied, mentally and physically, which will be the immediate challenge.

While I am contemplating what may lie ahead, I don’t want to be completely idle.

Typewriters will, in the short-term at least, be my saviour. And for much of that, I thank God for the existence of the Typosphere and for Typospherians. 

In the deserts of Sudan and the gardens of Japan

From Milan to Yucatan, ev'ry woman, ev'ry man

In the wilds of Borneo and the vineyards of Bordeaux

Eskimo, Arapaho, move their typebars to and fro

In the dock of Tiger Bay, on the road to Mandalay

From Bombay to Santa Fé, o'er the hills and far away

- Apologies to Ian Dury

PS: As for the longer-term future, there are already a few irons in the fire. My sons assure me they have managed to secure an audition for a part in Betty White’s Off Their Rockers. I hope to play an utterly annoying old fart who "fixes” computers. Is Grumpy Old Men still about, anyone know? And there’s also talk of reprising the role of Basil in a new series, Fawlty eBay. I get to sell some old typewriters and insult potential buyers. Sounds like fun!