While correcting my 12 year old neice's grammar on an exceedingly boring essay she was to submit for a school project on the flora and fauna of the Amazonian rain forests I could not help feeling that the present generation are missing out on yet another of the delights of a bygone age - Tippex. For many a pen or pencil is simply an implement for extracting the accumulated wax from one's ear.
I hate to think how many gallons of Tippex I used throughout my school years. All those notes and essays that I would need to alter because of a glaring mistake, a change of heart or a fresh idea that had entered my head. I often wondered if the manufacturer would not have been better served had they introduced an industrial size bottle of the correcting fluid but, given the speed with which the fluid hardened this probably was not such a great idea. Was I actually making more mistakes than I needed to? I don't know. Certainly there was part of me that rose to the challenge of gaining maximum use from each bottle before it turned to concrete.
Once I had left school and entered the vast employment pool I was aware that this was a completely different ballgame. The whole population must have been just as incompetent as me since 2 entire shelves of the stationery cupboard were given over to these small white bottles. Not only was the fluid available in white but there were other colours. For some reason there was only ever a very small supply of the thinner that was used to prolong the life of each bottle. You would have thought it to be the other way around since I usually managed to get through at least 3 bottles of thinners with each bottle of the fluid. I guessed it may have been a Health and Safety issue, thinner being flammable as it is. I thought that the young girl tasked with manning the stationery cupboard was naturally cross-eyed and simply elated with the joy of her work as Stationery Officer / Filing Clerk (grade 1) - it never crossed my mind that she was as high as a kite on most days from sniffing thinners. Maybe I am naturally naive but the only solvent abuse I was aware of in my school days was pouring colourless glue on some nerd's seat.
I must admit that I too am now more likely to reach for my keyboard than I am a pen but I do miss the messiness of eradicating one's errors with copious amounts of white, or other pastel shades of fluid. My fingers used to be permanently caked in the stuff, bringing out my rebellious streak - my parents having banned me from wearing nail polish. So much of the time would be spent rushing to put thoughts down on paper that a pause to correct a mistake was often a welcome distraction to reflect on what you had just written.
