I was writing my novel in the London Library, something I only do when home is so distracting that strange or even squalid details of my own domestic life (I almost wrote “grindathon”) start permeating the actual plots.
In the library I felt a little sad that most of the old wonky desks had been replaced with smart new ones that all matched. It was more professional but so much less grand. This is the way the world is going, I suppose. I started writing a scene in my book that was very anti-change, and especially against that relating to furniture. After a while I noticed that the people passing my desk were giving me long looks. These looks were soft and affectionate in nature. What was it all about? Sure, everyone likes a new kid on the block, and I was well turned out — because who has the confidence to venture to Piccadilly without being so? — but I couldn’t account for it.
The day wore on, with spry breaks for tea and toast that made me feel as if I were in a Betjeman poem, if not a Ready Brek advertisement. The golden looks at my desk kept coming. It seemed to me that it was my hands that were being observed. There was a time in my life when people frequently said, “You know, if you’re lucky, you could maybe be a hand model?” and I always said, “Why, thank you so much!” although secretly I wanted to mutter, “You know, as a remark, that isn’t maybe all that tip-top.”
I wrote in the library regularly about 20 years ago, and today quite a few of the same people were still there, in the same chairs! I had the feeling you get with schoolteachers that they might just have little bedrooms on the upper floors. Most of the people there didn’t look any older, either. Is there something about the air that keeps people young? Is it the lighting there?
One of these fellows of old, an acclaimed biographer now, approached me with a soft look. “I love your computer,” he said. “It’s so stylish, having one that’s, you know, almost antique.”
I felt for a moment as though I had been spotted going round Piccadilly Circus on a penny-farthing. I remembered my father-in-law telling me that he’d heard a groom in about 1924 saying, “These horseless carriages will never catch on, you know.”
“Oh, it’s nothing planned,” I said. “It just never stopped working so I didn’t get a new one, kind of thing.”
“Great!” he said.
“And also, when you have to stay in a hotel on your own it’s brilliant because if you put it into the bed for about half an hour it gives off so much heat that its lovely and cosy when you get in.”
“Great!” he said.
My white plastic Apple MacBook is nine years old today. It probably weighs about the same as a medium-sized fruit cake and a bag of apples. I had no idea it was now considered quaint - that I was. I like that joke where a woman recalls being on the train with her daughter, and her daughter is reading from her Kindle because she’s a modern girl, but she, who isn’t, is scrolling through the Bayeux Tapestry - but I don’t want to live like that.
Yet I feel tenderly towards my laptop. It is not long for this world and so it is deserving of my sympathy. Its hinges are fragile so you must lift its lid with care. There is a small loop of black wire sticking out of the base of the screen, which I tuck in now and then. I enjoy treating it carefully. Its continuous whirr and hum are soothing. How many more days of work does it have in it? It’s in the autumn of its life, maybe even the Boxing Day . . .
The DVD drive may be jammed with Modern Family series five. It may take two minutes to get on to the internet, during which time you often decide against doing so, but I love working on it. The keys make satisfying clacking sounds. It isn’t over-sensitive, doing all sort of things you haven’t asked it to do, like the computers of now.
Very soon, my MacBook will only be fit for special occasions, I suppose. Christmas columns, love scenes... I don’t know. I am aware I could lose everything at any minute, although I do try to back things up. It might even explode. There is a little bit of excitement each time I switch it on. I’m so grateful that it works. I’d do anything to keep it alive.
I ought to get another before its lights go out once and for all, but I expect I’ll carry on until the bitter end. I don’t like replacing things. We are both doing our best. It is my way.
— Financial Times
