'The quick brown fox' lives | Bangkok Post: opinion

POSTSCRIPT

Last Monday, the Bangkok Post business section carried an interesting article by Nanchanok Wongsamuth about one of the last shops in Bangkok selling or repairing typewriters _ remember them? Business at the Khlong Thom shop is definitely not brisk, but owner Suttiporn Chatviriyatam still manages to sell one typewriter a week, which is pretty good considering ''typewriter'' is almost an obsolete word these days.

I particularly liked Mr Suttiporn admitting that the only sentence he can type in English is ''the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'', the pangram (a sentence which uses all 26 letters of the alphabet) and a good test to see if any letters on a typewriter are a bit dodgy. Admittedly as a conversation opener ''the quick brown fox ...'' would hardly keep Mr Suttiporn going on the Bangkok cocktail circuit for very long.

I wish Mr Suttiporn all the best in his business preserving a great tradition. He is not alone in his love for typewriters. As the late American author John O'Hara once said: ''Much as I like owning a Rolls-Royce, I could do without it. What I could not do without is a typewriter.''