Eunice's knees were feeling particularly bad that morning, and she hadn't slept well, so the move from her bed to the chair was going to be a slow one. Her slippers were as she left them the night before, just under the edge of the bed. She shuffled with her walker to the bathroom and relieved herself noisily, sighing with pleasure. She put in her false teeth and peered closely at her face in the mirror. Then she ran her brush through her fine hair and coiled it into a tiny bun. She shuffled on, and in the kitchen made coffee and toast. It was difficult to walk and carry so cup and plate where shifted to the edge of the counter, then to the telephone table by the door, then to the coffee table by her chair. She finally sat down and sighed again, settling herself with the Radio 4 news. The first sip of coffee was interrupted by a loud crunch and the blaring of car horns. Eunice pulled herself to her feet again and leaned against the window frame to see down to the street. Two big expensive cars were stopped directly below. Already both drivers were out of their cars and angrily blaming the other for the collision. She opened the window a little wider, took from her windowsill a glass paperweight, and pitched it smack in the centre of the first car's windscreen. In the stunned silence that followed she sat back and picked up her coffee.
I taught myself to type after I left Polytechnic, on my mother's old manual typewriter, by typing 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' over and over. It has all the letters of the alphabet, so gradually you learnt where they all are on the keyboard. You had to pay close attention in those days, there was no going back and erasing the mistakes. And you had to hit the keys pretty hard. None of this namby pamby tap tap tapping, it went clunk, clunk, and at the end of each line sprung back with a loud 'ka-ching'.
