Theesh

Time to go to the optometrist. Yes yes I've been saying that for a while now; I was hoping to outlast the fashion for rectangular retro-National-Health post-horn-rims that I just know are going to make me look like a serial killer. But when you inadvertently type 'that' as 'shat' and then don't see it while you're proofreading, the whole necessity thing ramps up a notch.

The moving finger types, and, having typed, goes back and fixes it

Ever since I spilled champagne into the (white) keyboard of this now-venerable eMac, thus rendering it un-usable, I have instead been using the old (black) keyboard from my superannuated but still fully functional and therefore never-thrown-out iMac. The iMac is a strawberry one, christened Pink Patty by the Bloke, who said all computers must have names so you can talk to them and beg them to do things, so naturally when I bought the white eMac, which seemed somehow male, it was immediately christened Patrick White.

So with Pink Patty's keyboard plugged into Patrick White, and my goodness me that does sound a tad unwholesome, I find that at certain times of the day the light strikes the surfaces of the black keys in such a way that I can't see what they say. And, never having quite learned to touch-type accurately, I have spent most of this morning writing about a biography of somebody called Miles Granklin.

Serendipity

If you've spent the morning struggling through a competent but depressing and claustrophobic novel by President Nicolas Sarkozy's cultural advisor about the fatal Munich summit of 1938 as fictionalised from Daladier's point of view, it's a nice joyful restoration of perspective to come across this chez Duck.

Gratitude. We has it.

(Although I can't help thinking that the German for Wingdings must surely be die Wingen-Dingen.)