Typical

[desperance]

Tired now. Want my bed.

My bed is currently occupied by two sheets of steel and a typewriter the size of a Star Trek console. (It was my first real business investment - I borrowed £600 to buy that, in 1981, and the bank manager told me that according to the book I was a really bad risk and he ought to turn me down - and I haven't used it since I got my first computer in the mid-eighties, but I couldn't bear to get rid of it. It is huge and charcoal-grey, and still inveterately sexy. Also, hi-tech! It has a one-line screen, and doesn't type anything till you reach the end of the line!)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I still have my Smith Corona electric portable. I stopped being able to find ribbons for it years ago, but it was a big piece of my 20s.
Get the cats to be useful and clear the bed for you. You've done enough for one day. Though I am baffled by why you have two sheets of steel in your office. This would be perfectly normal for the marquis, you understand, but you have never given me the impression of having quite his love of metal working. Unless it's some obscure kind of cooking steel, of course.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Hah. I have an Amstrad 8256 (with dot matrix printer), four manual typewriters (one of which -- an Olympia Praxis -- needs a new drive cord, but is otherwise a wonderful machine), one extra-wide electric daisywheel typewriter, a Canon St*rwriter electronic typewriter .. and a Gesterner duplicator. Maybe I should open a museum.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I do also still have my Olivetti 32 portable, on which I launched my glittering career; indeed, I used it so much half the letters have worn off the keys.

You can have my typewriters on permanent loan, when you open the museum. I don't need them actually around me, I just need to be certain they haven't been discarded... (I would still have my early computers as well, but they've been lost in a series of burglaries. Oh, and my first-generation HP bubblejet printer is still going strong, in someone else's system. Lord, how old is that now - something over fifteen years for sure, and it might be pushing twenty...)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I also still have my Olivetti 32 portable: not the first typewriter I ever used (that was my sister's office Remington, on which I taught myself to type) but the first I ever owned. First to earn me money from my typing writing.

The sheet steel is actually the back plates of two shelving units, that I don't actually need (the back plates, you understand, not the shelving; the shelving is where it belongs to be, on my walls). I have this lovely notion of screwing steel plates to the office wall above the desk, and thus having about three square metres of magnetic noticeboard.

Alternatively, of course, I could stick it over the barbie and have a hotplate. Nothing obscure about that... (Not that I have a barbie, you understand; I just feel challenged suddenly.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, magnetic wall board... oh, yes. Love it. Or you could use them to make really good griddle scones and potato cakes and Korean pancakes and sizzling beef and Mongolian barbecue and... Metal is so useful (now I'm channelling the marquis. Must stop...).