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The sound of a manual typewriter brings inspiration to writer and broadcaster, Anna Magnusson.

Script:

Morning! I grew up with the clacking sound of a manual typewriter.

Both my parents were journalists. They met in the early 1950s, in the newsroom of the old Daily Express. I often think how noisy that place must have been – the battering of typewriters, the scrape of chairs, the ringing of phones and the buzz and thrum of conversation.

At home, where Dad often worked late into the night, I remember – I can still hear – that two-fingered clacking of the typewriter coming from his study. Mum and Dad weren’t touch typists: the sound they made was mechanical and noisy.

Many decades later, my mother was commissioned to write a history of the Woman’s Guild of the Church of Scotland. By that time, she had graduated to a new-fangled electric typewriter. It made a tick-tack-tick sound as she typed. She worked in a big room which used to be called our playroom – which sounds like something out of Enid Blyton. But all I remember doing there was playing table-tennis in the summer on an old, uneven dining table. We played there for hours. So the blip-blop sound of the wee white ball also sits deep in my memory.

But when I close my eyes - clear as a bell across the decades I hear that sharp little tick-tack of Mum’s typewriter. And behind that, the metallic battering from Dad’s study as he worked late into the night. It’s a soundtrack to my growing up.

Sound memories are elusive and precious. They can bypass the mechanics of trying to remember and, in an instant, undo the shackles of Time.

For that gift and that blessing, I give thanks this morning. Amen.

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