Touch Typing

In a conversation recently I was prompted to think back to my time spent at College in my late teenage years. I spent the duration of the course (two years) living in the spare bedroom of an elderly (as I perceived her at the time) lady who would provide me with breakfast together with a meal each night when I returned from my day at college. By coincidence it was during this period that our country changed from imperial to metric coinage; a shilling became ten pence and we lost farthings and halfpennies along the way. My landlady, having been brought up on pounds, shillings and pence, was quite disturbed by this change and I can recall her asking me whether our clocks would also be changing, minutes and seconds becoming decimalised. I hope I gave her the assurance she needed.

As part of my Diploma course I was required to produce a 'thesis', the subject being of my choice but the end product had to be a set length.

It so happened that around this time my parents had bought me a portable typewriter, a heavy clattery thing that went 'ping' each time you got to the end of a line and had to shift the paper to the next row. The positioning of the letter keys, what we now call 'qwerty' after the letters on the top left row, was developed in the 1870s by a man called Christopher Sholes and it was designed to prevent the typewriter levers of character pairs used most often when writing in English from jamming against one another. The layout has broadly survived since then although the French have 'azerty' and the Germans, 'qwertz' to suit their own languages.

If my typewriter still exists it will be on the shelves of a museum somewhere by now and I cannot recall using it much, if at all, after my college course finished. At the time, however, something prompted me to use it to type out my thesis and in doing so I made a decision which still lives with me to this day. Rather than simply pressing the keys with one finger, the simplest way for a non-typist, I deliberately made myself type using all my fingers, each key having a 'correct' finger allocated to it. I forced myself to learn to Touch Type. Thinking back I have no real recollection of what made me decide to do this; I was under no pressure from anyone to learn this skill and had no need for it for many years afterwards. Furthermore it slowed down considerably my efforts to produce a typed thesis since correcting my mistakes, of which there were quite a few, had to be done with 'Tipp-Ex', a white fluid that had to be painted on carefully with a brush then allowed to dry before it could be over typed. I struggle to recall what prompted me to put myself through all this.

The use of computers in the home came along some years later and then finally I found myself faced with a computer and keyboard in my workplace. My fingers were delighted to find themselves facing another qwerty keyboard where they were pressing the very same letter keys that they had been taught to touch years before so they didn't complain at all when they were asked to type something. 'We've been here before', they shouted, as the old skill came back. And it has stayed with me. I still far prefer using a keyboard to write anything more than a short message. My brain has memorised the position of the letters so well that I only have to think of a word and my fingers know where to go. This all happens without any conscious effort. Even when no keyboard is present I can tap out the shape of a word on any flat surface if requested.

 

The technology we use in our everyday lives keeps on changing and today we have small pocket sized computers (we call them 'phones') but these things will still present the user with an image of the qwerty keyboard on the screen. This has resulted in a new form of touch typing, this time using the thumbs to tap the screen whilst the other fingers hold the device steady. Some people can do this very rapidly, maybe even close to my own typing speed when I am going flat out. And our phones will go one step further by presenting a suggested word on the screen after only a few keys have been pressed, something my typewriter could never do. Phones are even clever enough to type the words we speak into them, although both of these talents can lead to rather embarrassing mistakes for which the bottle of Tipp-Ex is no help at all.

Today, those of us who still prefer to type with all fingers on a qwerty keyboard can also go small by using a folding version of the gadget. This is (naturally) powered by a rechargable battery hidden inside and the absence of any connecting wires indicates that it will send signals to a nearby screen using Bluetooth radio waves. Somehow I cannot imagine my elderly landlady coping with such cleverness were she still with us today.

Unthinkable

We are in the habit of following The News to discover what is happening in the world. Earlier in our lives this would have involved buying a newspaper or perhaps listening to BBC Radio 4 at certain times of the day. The Time Signal, known in my family as the 'pips', was something we were familiar with since it always came before a news broadcast. If we skip a generation or two, the modern way to access the news is via the internet and today we read the news on the screen of a tablet (the modern day word for a small self contained computer). We subscribe to a newspaper (a word still used despite the absence of any paper) and this gives us a view of the world that we can cope with. Clearly there is bias in what we read just as there is with any source of information but we can live with this since it broadly agrees with our own views. So that, and the occasional television news programme is how we keep ourselves informed on what is happening at home and abroad.

This strategy enables us to be selective about what we read or watch as there are many items of news that we simply do not want to follow too closely as they can be too unsettling. Many of the unpleasant things happening in our world are beyond our control and we adopt a strategy of un-listening in order to shut them out. [Stoic principle: We cannot change things that are outside of our control but we can change our attitude if we are pained by them. We can wipe out our judgement of them.]

Our own limits on politics-related news are quite low, not just due to a lack of interest but also because we have some difficulty understanding what is being said. The interpretation of political ideas and debate by journalists always seems to assume prior knowledge of the way politics works in a particular location and whilst we might be familiar with things at home and know the 'wing' to which one political party is leaning it is unlikely that another country will follow the same simple right or left distinction.

The other common element when listening to or reading a politician's words occurs when a question is put to them by a journalist. The lengths they will go to avoid answering seem endless. We even have a word for what they are avoiding, the 'straight' answer. Their reasons for doing this will clearly depend upon what it is they are trying to avoid. It might be their own embarrassment or perhaps that of one of their colleagues or maybe the whole of government is at risk of being tripped up by an admission should it be put into words. Rather different is a conversation one might have with someone in the street or with a group of friends so that to our ears a politician often stands out as someone we cannot bear to listen to. One wonders whether someone entering politics goes through a training programme on 'question avoidance' so that they are ready for their first encounter with the press.

There are exceptions to this general rule, of course, but generally it seems that the higher up the ranks you are the less likely it is that you will give a 'straight' answer. Avoidance is vitally important when speaking about the past or the present, historical things for which your political party might be accountable or things that it is doing right now. When it comes to speaking about future events, however, when making promises about what your political party will do then a switch to straight talking makes perfect sense. Accountability will come later or if not elected perhaps never at all. Politicians are under constant pressure, this coming from the party they represent as well as from those who might have chosen to vote them in. These are not necessarily the same and indeed many of the views thrust upon politicians will conflict with their own. It is a world where everyone is being pushed and pulled in different directions and any beliefs held before being elected will inevitably become tainted.

So in some ways the question avoidance strategy is easy to understand, particularly given the ease with which modern day social and other media enables spoken words and views to be disseminated. Gone are the days when privacy could be relied upon so long as nobody was in earshot. But at the same time it does put us all at considerable risk since we are liable to be influenced by untruths just as easily as the truth. The era when it was difficult for an individual to air their views widely has gone and as a result we often feel we are being bombarded with more information than we need or ever want to hear. We can try to be selective by testing the veracity of someone's comments, particularly those question-avoiding politicians, or alternatively we can decide they are just not worth listening to and switch off.

Recent world events [enough said] seem to be driven on by this same desire to avoid the truth and instead to present the facts in a way that suits some other purpose, despite the fact that we can all clearly see what is missing. It is even more alarming to think that in some circumstances today the very notion of 'straight talking' might be considered illegal in the eyes of the law, which may result in these words not surviving here for long. So read it whilst you can!

Battling for bike space

Once again the topic here returns to preparations for our grand cycling adventure planned for later this year, a planning process that we have been through before so one might think that there is little more to say. Booking early pays off, as we have discovered many times over the years, and by this time, barely two months before we depart, surely all our train and ferry bookings should be in place so we can focus on getting our bodies fit enough for the journey we have planned. (For those new to this blog this link will explain more.)

Looking back to our cycling tour around Holland in 2025, the journey with our bikes to the ferry port in North Shields (near the city of Newcastle) could not have been more complicated. Two ferries, an island crossing, two overnight stays, three different trains then finally a cycle ride along the banks of the River Tyne to the ferry port together made it by far the most complicated and stressful part of the whole holiday. Transport bookings we had made in advance all had to go smoothly as a single delay in just one leg of the journey might have put in jeopardy us making it to the ferry on time. So naturally with all this in mind we started this year's plans with the intention of making the home to port journey simpler and less liable to disruption. But our options are still limited. The location of our home on the west coast of Scotland where we have limited road choices, many of which are dangerously busy, will always make travelling with the bikes a challenge unless we just strap them onto a rack and drive somewhere with them. Rule out this option and we are back to relying on trains. Luckily these things run to timetables and so long as the changes between one train and the next leave sufficient time then any slight delay becomes insignificant. Sounds simple, eh? And so it is for humans but as soon as you include bikes then the problems start. They need to be booked on board as part of the ticketing process and this is where the whole system falls apart. 

Plan B which we are following and for which, as mentioned before, the ferry is now booked and paid for, needs a section which reads "Getting to Newcastle" by train, the first part of which is the sub-plot of getting us and our bikes to the nearest railway station, some sixty miles distant from home. What would be useful at this point is finding someone with a motor vehicle big enough to carry us, our bikes and our luggage who is also willing to drive us where we need to go. Here we are in luck! Visiting us from time to time is Gemma, a lovely lady friend who lives not far away, and after a little experimentation we are pleased to discover that our bikes will fit into her car. Better still she seems to relish the challenge of delivering us somewhere. All that remains is for us to book some train tickets. Simple, one might think.

Our route starts at our nearest train station then goes first to Glasgow, on to Edinburgh then finally down the East Coast Main Line to Newcastle. One would think that arranging this as a single booking would be simple and for humans, yes it is. For bikes, no chance. We know from our previous experience that trains on the final leg from Edinburgh have only limited bike spaces (and once on board they must be lifted and hung up in a small cupboard) so we book this section of the journey on its own and reserve two bike spaces. This just leaves us the other two legs - starting point station to Glasgow then Glasgow to Edinburgh - so these we try to book. We soon discover that between Glasgow and Edinburgh there is no need to reserve bike spaces at all. They can travel free so long as there is enough room. Our nearest station to home is 'Arrochar & Tarbet' so we try to book ourselves plus bikes on a train that will bring us into Glasgow with time to spare. To do this we can use the internet or else a phone app but whichever way we go we meet obstructions. The app says we need to reserve spaces for the bikes but it won't let us do it at the time of day we need to travel and the website tells us that all the bike spaces are fully booked on all the trains. We find this hard to believe so resort to calling a helpline and eventually discover that the internet is lying! Apparently booking bike spaces cannot be done until closer to the departure date, but nobody can tell us when this might be. Again, we can buy tickets for humans but not for bikes. Already these complexities are complicating our home to port journey, just as before.

Simply getting this far has involved us in hours of research and frustrating phone calls (most often speaking with someone whose accent is difficult for us to understand) with all the stress of wondering whether we should not simply revert to one of our earlier plans and drive ourselves all the way to Newcastle. Our van would then sit there happily waiting for us to return when our holiday was over. What could be simpler?

But then it happens. After multiple failed attempts at train booking, one day, quite by chance, we fire up the app again and suddenly it is allowing us to book spaces for our bikes on the train we want. Jumping past yet another stumble (the app won't accept our payment) we hit the website and make the booking. It is done!

Finally we can relax. There's just the small matter of getting the actual tickets and these must be obtained in advance from a ticket machine... which is when we discover that our starting point at Arrochar seems to be the one place in the entire country that does not have one of these. How wonderfully unhelpful is that! To remedy this we now have to plan another journey to a train station that has a ticket machine. The battle goes on...