Now, I had completely forgotten the big brass decoration which had always been a feature in the house as long as I could remember.
And because familiarity often creates a sense of complacency, I never wondered where it came from, or how it first came into our possession.
The realist in me thinks that it might well have been something mum picked up in a secondhand shop.
But the design shouts out the Far East, and like many families we had connections with the sub-continent and Africa, through one of our uncles who spent his adult life working in India, Siri Lanka, and Kenya, before settling in South Africa.
And so, I think it is entirely possible it was one of his presents to my parents, along with a collection of African elephants carved out of wood and other “exotic things”.
Uncle Charles was the adventurous one of dad’s brothers, and in his early 20s went out to the Empire, not as civil servant but as an administrator in a succession of companies, which I guess dealt in export and import, although exactly just what they and he did I never asked, and are now lost.
But he was one of thousands of young men and women, who went East to service Empire and Britain’s vast commercial and trading business.
But I do remember that when he retired in the early 1960s, he and a “pal”, drove from Cairo to the Cape, and having reached South Africa, and apart from brief trips home, that is where he stayed.
Mother was never quite reconciled to the suitcase he left with us on one visit, which included tins of butter, which then and now, still exercise my imagination.
Just what happened to them I have long forgotten, but the “treasures from the Far East” were shared out between me and my sisters when dad died.
And that is why I had all but forgotten that big brass plate, because it went with Elizabeth who sent over a couple of pictures of it, along with some of a typewriter which belonged to Colin’s mum.
The typewriter is one of those sturdy black numbers which were an essential part of offices around the world and in its way is as much a comment on how we all used to live as the brass plate.
I still marvel out how people used them, relying on erasers and later Typex to gloss correct mistakes, while remembering to buy into new ribbons.
Today, they are as much a bit of our past as the technology of producing newspapers with printing presses.
Of course there are still writers who use typewriters, and mother wrote plays, short stories and a novel on an Olivetti, which was a sleek portable version of Colin and Liz’s model.
And I am in awe, given that with a computer, corrections are just a click away, while the process of copy and paste revolutionizes the stuff of expressing ideas and feelings.
So that is it ……….. one brass plate taking me back to our uncle and Empire, and the typewriter offering up a very different way of expressing yourself.
Location; Kent
Pictures; from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick
The realist in me thinks that it might well have been something mum picked up in a secondhand shop.
But the design shouts out the Far East, and like many families we had connections with the sub-continent and Africa, through one of our uncles who spent his adult life working in India, Siri Lanka, and Kenya, before settling in South Africa.
And so, I think it is entirely possible it was one of his presents to my parents, along with a collection of African elephants carved out of wood and other “exotic things”.
Uncle Charles was the adventurous one of dad’s brothers, and in his early 20s went out to the Empire, not as civil servant but as an administrator in a succession of companies, which I guess dealt in export and import, although exactly just what they and he did I never asked, and are now lost.
But I do remember that when he retired in the early 1960s, he and a “pal”, drove from Cairo to the Cape, and having reached South Africa, and apart from brief trips home, that is where he stayed.
Mother was never quite reconciled to the suitcase he left with us on one visit, which included tins of butter, which then and now, still exercise my imagination.
Just what happened to them I have long forgotten, but the “treasures from the Far East” were shared out between me and my sisters when dad died.
The typewriter is one of those sturdy black numbers which were an essential part of offices around the world and in its way is as much a comment on how we all used to live as the brass plate.
I still marvel out how people used them, relying on erasers and later Typex to gloss correct mistakes, while remembering to buy into new ribbons.
Today, they are as much a bit of our past as the technology of producing newspapers with printing presses.
Of course there are still writers who use typewriters, and mother wrote plays, short stories and a novel on an Olivetti, which was a sleek portable version of Colin and Liz’s model.
And I am in awe, given that with a computer, corrections are just a click away, while the process of copy and paste revolutionizes the stuff of expressing ideas and feelings.
So that is it ……….. one brass plate taking me back to our uncle and Empire, and the typewriter offering up a very different way of expressing yourself.
Location; Kent
Pictures; from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick
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