It's hard to believe for any youngsters (and not so youngsters) out there but back when I was at Uni we didn't have many of these computer things (or access to them) and I actually typed my dissertation out on an old typewriter with laborious two finger typing. Some students paid typists to type out their dissertation for them, but I wasn't flush. This means I've not got it to hand other than in hard copy including faded letters where not I've not pressed down hard enough or doubly dark from retyping (not to mention the white flakes of liquid paper/correction fluid). The dissertation even included hand drawn figures.

I'm a faster typer now and these days when I mistype there is not the issue of type-bars sticking and with the magic of computing the letters reorganise themselves into words instead of becoming botched smudges with dots of red from a sticky ribbon.



There was something quite enjoyable about typing on a typewriter though. Can't put my finger on it. Maybe you feel closer to it, having to be in the zone with the ribbon and the type bars, making sure that the type pressure was even and making sure each letter was right. The play of the keyboard and the noise and the return at the end of each line was all part of it. Perhaps typing on a typewriter as opposed to a computer is equivalent to the difference between driving and riding a motorbike. I should reread the first chapter or two of 'Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. I reckon there must be an equivalent 'Zen & the Art of Typewriter Maintenance' out there.

Contemplating retyping the dissertation onto my computer. Perhaps I'll put it on my website (maybe under the Memoirs pages). Retyping it would make me revisit what I wrote back in the 1980s and discover the things I knew back then about the subject and have long forgotten. Haven't said what it was, have I? Well it was an unusual one and not a subject I've seen much about since (or indeed ever);

'The Origin of the Carbonatite Magma'

Now you know that, I bet you can't wait for it.


Ol Doinyo Lengai

Carbonatite is a very rare igneous rock and the only currently active volcano with a carbonatite magma is Ol Doinyo Lengai in the African Rift Valley. But hey, if I get around to typing the dissertation up you'll soon know that.