17. Touch Typing

In the summer of 1996 a young person graduated from university and made her way back to the big smoke to start 'real' life. Concerned that a law degree was insufficient leverage for the modern world, certain perhaps that this strange geeky fruit of her loins would have no recourse but secretarial work, the young person's mother packed her off to Sight&Sound on the Charing Cross Road to be taught to touch type (plus the basics of Word and Excel).

The young person spent two weeks in front of a peculiar light board, training her brain and her fingers to work together without her eyes. It was (to be fair) quite extraordinary (in a Manchurian Candidate kind of way) when the brain did finally take over, and little by little the fingers learned to find the keys on the board without looking. In order to graduate from Sight & Sound the young person had to complete a touch-typing test showing that she could type 25 words a minute, plus create a usable spreadsheet and a table, or something. Anyway, graduate she did, and it was clear to all that only the second graduation of the summer really meant much to the mother.

I spend 8-10 hours a day at a computer these days. I must write thousands of words a day. My touch typing is not particularly fast (I think I probably do 50 words a minute, or thereabouts), but it is reasonably accurate. I had to type out something I had written in longhand yesterday, and for some reason I became slightly awe-struck by what I was doing. I think it's the same psychological hiccup as when you look at an everyday word, like SCHOOL, and for a moment all you can see is how weird it is. Then it goes back to just being school. Anyway, anyway, I was sitting typing and I thought,

'Thanks, Ma. This is a very cool weird thing to be able to do. I hope you'll forgive me for not going to work as a secretary in the city and marrying an Old Etonian and having a vast house in the country with a granny flat for you to move in to and five kids for you to spoil. But you know, now that I'm a writer, it's clear that this touch typing thing might be one of the best things I ever learned to do. It makes my life so EASY.'