I was six years old. The Zilly schoolhouse had no heat. Anyway, that’s where I learnt how to write. On a piece of slate. You were scratching and then deleting with a sponge what you had just scratched, and then scratching again: a e i o u.

And now, sixty plus years later, in command of this mysterious computer keyboard, it still is a e i o u, but - I have a whole world at my fingertips: links to the internet, e-mail to write to people I know and to people I don’t know and to ask them questions, to verify facts, but how important are facts? I also write e-mails when I am stuck or undecided - to get emotional support from someone somewhere in the world (there is nothing wrong with documenting this indecision - for more meanings of the word Unentschlossenheit click here). From slate to computer in a lifetime: my life’s time.

On our slates we first tried scratches, then the easiest letters, then

lines of letters. Soon we could write whole words, and eventually

sentences: The flower is beautiful. The grass is green. There is a hole in my shoe. I tried hard to write more or less legibly. Once the slate was full, we erased everything and wrote anew: Door Farmhouse Apple Tree Brook Spring. And once again: The flower is beautiful.

At home I tried on my own: Is Daddy alive? What does chocolate

taste like?

Later I learnt to spell words like power outage, reconstruction,

calories, bread ration, milk allotment. Heimkehrer, Gaskontingent,

Lebensmittelkartenstammabschnitt. In German all these wonderful compound nouns are at your disposal. Rohrrücklauffahrbremse, , Kleiderpunkte. Thinkaboutit.