London Calling

Piotr Trumpiel's timing is, as always, impeccable. On a morning when my five-year battle with fatigue, pain and nausea finally got a name, a most welcome cheer-up parcel arrived from London. In it were two typewriter-themed T-shirts (the weather is really warming up here right now), two typewriter ribbon tins (with ribbon in both of them) and, best of all, a charming typewritten letter from PT (the prince of typospherians) himself. Thank you, Piotr.

London calling to the faraway towns

Now insurgency is declared and battle come down

London calling to the typewriter herds

Come out of the cupboard, you Kolibri birds

 

London calling, now don't look to us

Phony technology has bitten the dust

London calling, see we ain't got no swing

'Cept for the reign of that typebar thing

 

Now get this, London calling, yes, I was there, too

And you know what they said? Well, some of it was true

London calling at the top of the dial

And after all this, won't you give me a smile?

London Calling.

- with apologies to The Clash

THE Wedding Typewriter

This little Royal portable typewriter is ready for next Saturday's wedding of my son Danny and his fiancée Emily Hansen. The typewriter will be used by guests to write their best wishes to Danny and Emily at the reception at University House in Canberra:

Unchaining Young Minds: The Royal Portable Typewriter 1940-49

Starting in September 1940 and extending to either side of America's involvement in World War II, Royal promoted its portable typewriters with a sustained advertising campaign aimed at young students. The ad lines began with "Why should eager minds be chained?" and ran to "Can a typewriter help your child to think?" and "Why you should start young fingers thinking early".
Royal even claimed to quantify the degree to which one of its portables could improve student performance (17 per cent more work, 40 per cent fewer spelling mistakes, 32 per cent fewer English mistakes). 

September 2, 1940

October 28, 1940

December 9, 1940

January 6, 1941

March 3, 1941

March 4, 1946

April 29, 1946

June 3, 1946

June 17, 1946

September 9, 1946

October 28, 1946

September 22, 1947

April 18, 1949

YUM! Sweet As: Typewriter Jelly Lollies

Make your own typewriter jelly lollies. These are easy to make, provided you have the moulds. The only ingredients are jelly crystals, gelatine and water. I have also made these as chocolates, but I found the chocolate ones a bit hard on the teeth. These are not too sweet, or sugar-coated like store-bought lollies, and are a nice chewy texture. I used orange, mango orange, mango, creaming soda, lime, raspberry, blackberry and berry blue flavours.

Maurice Maeterlinck and his Typewriters

"Maeterlinck does not 'speak' his productions before putting pen to paper, to try the anticipated effect; they bud and burgeon silently within him, like a fruit ripening to maturity before it may be plucked; the words are there, the sentences flow freely, and are written out almost without erasure, directly he sits down at a table to transcribe the work of the brain ready for the typewriter ..."

LIFE, March 31, 1941

Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, August 1924

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium, on August 29, 1862, and died in Nice, France, on May 6, 1949, aged 86. A playwright, poet and essayist, he was a Fleming but wrote in French. Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.

In 1920, Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn lured Maeterlinck to the US and when Maeterlinck finally submitted two scripts, Goldwyn was horrified to discover the hero of one of them was a bee. After reading the first few pages, Goldwyn burst out of his office, exclaiming: "My God! The hero is a bee!" But Goldwyn reassured Maeterlinck, "Don't worry, Maurice, you'll make good yet."

A typewritten note Ernest Hemingway addressed to the late Maeterlinck in 1952:

RIP Ben Bradlee (1921-2014)

"You never monkey with the truth."

- Ben Bradlee

Benjamin Crowninshield "Ben" Bradlee (born Boston, Massachusetts, August 26, 1921) died today of natural causes at his home in Washington DC, aged 93. Bradlee was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. He became a national figure during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when he challenged the Federal Government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and oversaw the publication of Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal. At his death he held the title of vice-president at-large. Bradlee was also an advocate for education and the study of history, including working for years as an active trustee on the boards of several major educational, historical and archaeological research institutions.