Pilita Clark Writing Her Column For The Financial Times

Pilita Clark is a columnist at The Financial Times. I used to sit next to Pilita when we both worked on the FT's Saturday magazine. 

I don't suppose it's really possible that the sound of her typing, which you hear in this episode, can really have reminded me of that time - because one person's typing isn't all that different from another's, surely. But listening to it did take me right back, as I pictured Pilita "typing up a storm" (a phrase she used to use herself sometimes).

As you listen, you can hear a wonderful sigh after about 16m 30s. It's not quite a sigh of relief, because she's still got a few minutes left. I don't know what kind of sigh it is. I don't suppose Pilita knows, either. But it makes me think about my own typing process, and how I probably do tend to hold my breath while developing a particular line of thought. 

Incidentally, yesterday I recorded a livestream of myself typing, direct to Facebook. I was screensharing a Google Doc, so viewers could see the words as they appeared, and sometimes disappeared. I streamed it using Zoom, and thought I'd done it so that there was no tiny image of me on the screen - but when I watched a few moments I saw that I was, in fact, visible. 

And I noticed that, though I mostly sit quite still, I do also move my head a certain amount - a bit like a conductor focusing on different parts of the orchestra. I'm not sure what this is about, but am enjoying this ongoing process of examining writing as a performance.

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