Can Type Be Cast

My little shop is called Ike's Books and Collectables. It gives me an everyday insight into how people think about times old, times new. In the week, a friend bequeathed a projector and reels of family history.

With a bit of cajoling, the film began to unwind and the pictures unrolled onto the wall. It was such an exciting moment. Her parents in the 70's. Young, in love. He leaning into her, touching, she pushing his hands away, only to lean forward beaming. There was something about the haziness that gave it authenticity. But like the past, it made me think of the present. What happens to love grown old? Does it, as Shakespeare would have it, 'wither and so die'?

For some, age does not alter the depth of desire. Think of the philosopher Andre Gorz's letter to his wife D (Dorine).

"You'll soon be eighty-two. You have shrunk six centimetres, you only weigh forty-five kilos yet you are as beautiful, gracious and desirable as ever. We have now lived together forty-eight years and I love you more than ever."

Like love that can never be requited, the allure of the typewriter has come around once again. A customer donated one in a pastel green case, brushes neatly inserted into the lid, the keys shining. Children are fascinated by it, gently pressing the keys like a computer keyboard, only to be disappointed when nothing is imprinted on the page. The typewriter keys need force, the ink magically appearing.

What once was an essential item has now become a collectable that someone declutters.

Remember the punch and peck words had in those days,

the strain of Q in the little finger, the type head

leaning out on its stalk from its semicircular roost,

the angelus ting that marked the end of a line

the slap of the silver lever that jerked time forward,

the shift key that tilted the world on its fulcrum,

the grey formalities hedged by tabs and margins

that turned language into geometry, the braille

of the other side of the page under the fingertips?

What was struck here could never be unstruck,

Switch on the anglepoise lamp; outside the window

it's carbon-paper dark. There's ribbonsmudge on your fingers

and a new sheet of foolscap rolled into place on the platen

(Matthew Francis).

How often have we heard the cliché 'the pen is mightier than the sword'? The first commercial typewriter was produced by Remington and Sons, New York in 1873. The same company famous for producing rifles in the 1820s. But, somehow we know that books are mightier than bullets. It is why people want to burn them, re-write them and ban them. How did Shakespeare put it in the Tempest: '...Remember/ First to possess his books.'