This is quite a moment. Lyn and I just got back from a long lunch in the park to find a package waiting for me: my new keyboard. As I noted here, a while ago, I noticed my expanded keyboard starting to play up. Keys were either repeating, or not registering at all. At worst, whole sentences would be deleted before I could stop it. To begin with I thought it was something to do with the settings on my Mac, but I couldn’t find anything to put it right; the best I could do was get it to register one key press at a time, so I could stop it printing strings of letters. I then began to suspect it was the keyboard. After all, it is thirteen years old. I got it when I was at Macc college, and it has served me well: I wrote my A-level essays on it, then my Bachelor’s work, and then the 40,000 words of my master’s thesis. On top of that, the vast majority of my blog entries have been written on it. Thus, while most of the paint on the letters – especially the vowels – has been worn away, and one of the space keys is completely missing, I’ve grown rather attached to this old keyboard. Given the amount of stuff I’ve written on it, part of me is sad to see it go. It seemed only apt to compose this last blog entry on it, before swapping them over.