The photo of the Good Companion...

... and the chutney pan.  I've tried some.  It's an acquired taste.  

It might get better when it has stood in a darkened cupboard for a while, or if it is the only food available after an apocalypse.  Something like that.  Definitely and acquired taste.

My new companion is a Good Companion...

...and a lovely one too - with some little issues, but not too many.  It is a number 7, and only cost me £3.

You can read the story on the right.  But I warn you, if the ribbon problems annoy you half as much reading it as it did when I was typing it, you might end up wishing you hadn't started it.

I do especially like the unusual keys - my Royal Diana does have the dead key for the accent, but none of the others in my collection have them.

Whilst tinkering with it, sadly, the chutney burnt slightly on the stove.  I've still bottled it, and will tell people that it is supposed to taste like that... small price to play for getting the ribbon to work properly.

I'll upload a photo of it later, when my camera is to hand.

A little update...

(typed on a little notelet the size of a Rolodex card... smaller than I realised, so the last line got a bit chopped - it should have said 'Typed on the Kitchen Typewriter').

Typewriters in the classroom...

Another exciting first - my first scanned image!  It is of an A5 piece of writing paper - but the scanner seems to have cropped the edges nicely, so that you can't tell at first glance that it is real paper.

I'll keep you up-to-date with how my typewriters in the classroom experiment goes!

(PS - I realise how sexist it sounds talking abouot interesting the boys in the mechanics - that flows out of my conversation with the Headteacher... she was telling me about a recent music lesson where the inner workings of the piano enthused a group of boys.  They went from not being interested to wanting to try it for themselves, just because they could see how it all worked). 

Selectric Sorrows

I'm sorry that I have not blogged for almost a month - and that I am almost a month behind in reading other people's blogs.

It's not that I have had an exciting life - just busy with this-and-that, too much work and not enough time in which to do it.

Still, what I have had time to do is to extend my collection a little bit... with two Selectrics.  Sadly, neither of them work.

I think that the motor in both of them works.  They certainly fire up, and Selectric Correcting III has lovely lights that light up on the pitch scale.  

That's it on the right, looking all lovely and red.  Below you can see the other one - a Selectric II.  This one has a black case, which I have removed to tinker with.

I know almost nothing about them, but I do know enough to realise that the cords should be connected to the print/ribbon mechanism rather than merely resting on the keyboard!

The red one doesn't have dangling cables... instead it seems to be tightly wound around a cog inside.

As I mentioned above, I know almost nothing about Selectrics... but I do hope that someone out there in the typosphere might be able to point me in the right direction to get at least one of them working.

Is there anyone in the UK who can repair such a beast?  I've not managed to find one anywhere, despite searching on the Internet and looking though the Yellow Pages.

If I can get one repaired I already have a selection of golfball printheads to use, and several ribbons - enough to keep using it for years to come!