« Before Blogging »

Imagine growing up without the internet. All that exposure. All that access. You can't even begin to explain it. Three weeks on a waiting list for an authoritative tome, your dissertation depending on it. And the scribbling. Reams of secret anger biro'd in angst. My god the dog-eared spiral-bounds. Rows of skinny black and reds. Moleskines once you could. The wailing; 'my world is ending!'. 

"I burnt all mine" She says. "Sure we only ever wrote about things when we were unhappy. We never catalogued the good stuff". Oh. I know that. I can't bear to open mine either. But until I release the entire archive to a museum at least google can't crawl it.

Skills are lost. In a serious meeting, someone wraps a cleft fist around a pen as if it's only her third time. Mentally everyone in the room adds a rubber creature on top and a shock of cheap pink fur.