Tell it to the Marines

My Mums uncle, Edward Eder joined the Royal Marine Light Infantry

at the age of 19 in 1881. Served for twelve years in Gibraltar, Malta  and Egypt, including  the Sudan during the Mahdi rebellions but was not involved in the disastrous Siege of Khartoum as far as I can gather.  But he did receive the Egyptian Medal and the Khedive Star so he must have been around somewhere.

Left the Marines in 1894, mostly earned good conduct pay having spent only seven days in the cells which for the army of the time was good going over a period of just over twelve years.

Obviously he  did not settle to civilian life as he signed up again in May 1901 into the Royal Garrison Artillery and remained in until May 1905 spending most of his time in Gibraltar.  

There is a family story that Edward visited his Grandfather in Trieste during his military service but this seems unlikely as the journey from Gibraltar would have taken quite a long time.

When the first world war came along Edward signed up again in October 1915 but was discharged in December as being "unlikely to become an efficient soldier".  

According to his Service record Edward was 5 foot 6 and half inches when he joined in 1881 but was 5 foot nine and half inches in 1894.  Obviously the good life in the Marines. 

The qwerty keyboard and me.

 I have had an association with the qwerty keyboard for something like 72 years and sadly it appears to be coming to an end.  I am still a reasonably competent touch typist but an unexplained damage to my left wrist some four months ago has meant that I have not been able to use my left hand for typing and I think I am l;osing the ability to do so.

Many two finger typists would consider that not to be a problem.  But if you learned touchtyping all those years ago then that is the only way you can type.  The constant repetion of familiar keys when learning to touch type means that the fingers automatically go to the correct key to press without having to think about it.  I think this is called muscle memory consolidation.  Your right hand then  does not necessarily  know where the keys normally pressed by the left are located. 

I tried to use speech recognition software but the skill involved in thinking and talking at the same time is completely diferent to thinking and typing at the same time.  I used to be fairly competent in having my fingers on the keyboard keeping up  with my mental flow when I was writing, say  for instance something like a blog.   But to dictate to the computer and watch the words coming up  on the screen inhibits the thought flow.  At least  does for me.