Daily Archives: December 21, 2012

The End of the World

end of the world

So today according to the Mayans the world is going to end.  I’ve given this some thought and decided to

  • Spend all the money in the bank account
  • Buy everything I ever wanted and max out the credit cards
  • Complete everything on my Bucket List that one can do in a day
  • Mortgage the house so that I can do all of the above and more

But then I had the thought – what if the world doesn’t end today?  Oh then I shall be in a whole lot of trouble.  Dug in so deep I may never see daylight.

So back to my normal if humdrum life.  What do I want to talk about today.

Well – there is only 3 days 11 hours and 24 minutes (who cares about the seconds when we are so close) until Christmas.  How about you – click here to see.

And I then thought about writing on my blog and how writing and the implements we use, have changed over the years.

pencilWhen I first went to school we learned to write using a pencil.  This was good because mistakes could be easily erased.

pen and ink

From there, once somebody determined we were sufficiently skilled, we moved on to writing with pen and ink.
What a mess we all made in the beginning.  Splotches and blotches everywhere.

fountain pen

From there we moved on to fountain pens.  How pleased and proud we were of our first ‘real’ pens.
As with all things we quickly got used to using them but now instead of blotches and splotches on the paper we had inky fingers where the pen leaked.

Pen

At some stage we moved on to ballpoint pens and I guess most of us use ballpoints for everyday handwriting tasks.

Early typewriterand then some of us learned to type.  As I have said in the past, I learned on a clunky Underwood very like the one shown here.
We had typing lessons for only six months when I was at school but those lessons have stood me in very good stead over the years.

IBM Selectric TypewriterThen several other typewriters including the IBM Golf ball that we thought was so very advanced and we all loved it, particularly when the correcting ribbon was introduced.  No more rubbing out – hooray!

LaptopAnd now of course there are computers.  What a wonderful invention and so very easy to learn to type on them.

But there are some pitfalls of relying on technology.  Here’s a clever verse that was sent to me some time ago and I should like to share it with you.

It’s an Ode to Spellcheckers

Eye halve a spelling chequer
it came with my pea see
it plainly marques four my revue
Miss takes eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
and wait four it too say
weather eye am wrong or write
it shows me straight aweigh

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee four two long
and I can putt the error rite
Its rare lee ever wrong

Eye halve run this poem threw it
Am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer has tolled me sew!”

See you tomorrow after the End of the World.

Christmas bells