Lord knows I’m not the world’s tidiest man, and my desk would give most efficiency gurus the shivers. It’s crammed with paperwork, mysterious cables, numerous CDs and an abandoned mug of coffee that seems to have transformed into primordial ooze. It has several books open, face-down, and the small tin that has held USB sticks now hosts discarded chocolate bar wrappers. Yet there’s only one thing on my desk that I’m actually ashamed of, and that’s my keyboard.
There’s nothing wrong with the keyboard itself - it’s the nicest one I’ve ever owned. At one point it was shiny aluminium with bright white tile keys. Now it’s some kind of grim, dirt-encrusted metal with keys in various shades of black, grey and brown. The space, shift and Ctrl keys look like Albert Steptoe has been wiping his used handkerchiefs on them.
I know what you’re thinking: messy desk, grumpy demeanor, keen interest in computers - this guy is probably averse to soap and showers. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. While I’m not OCD in my cleanliness, I’m pretty scrupulous when it comes to personal hygiene. I don’t come in straight from doing the gardening and start typing. Nor do I pop out, take my socks off, go barefoot trail-running, then return to my desk and type with my toes. Why then, should my keyboard leave you thinking that I do all those things... every day?
I know I’m not alone in my keyboard curse. In the days when I used to work in magazine offices I saw many gruesome keyboards caked with grime, most belonging to perfectly nice and even fragrant people. You could see them cringing in embarrassment when you sat at their desk or lay fingers on their keyboard, knowing that you must be wondering if they swept chimneys in their spare time.
I also know that you can clean keyboards, and that there are dusters, wipes, gels, brushes, compressed air cans and even tiny vacuum cleaners dedicated to this task. Every now and then I give mine a quick wipe, but this only seems to make it collect filth faster. A few weeks later, it’s as bad as ever. What is it about keyboards that attracts so much dirt?
Of course, it’s not the only way keyboards have annoyed me. I’ve had keys that mysteriously stop working and keys that stick. I’ve had noisy keyboards that have kept my wife awake at night, guaranteeing me even more furious looks than usual. I’ve had keyboards that insissst on tyyyyping certaain letttters multipllllllllle timmmes, but sporadically, making it hard to tell if something’s really wrong. I’ve been annoyed by stupid layouts where vital keys have been shrunk, moved or hidden. And that’s without dealing with all those stupid virtual keyboards that leave you wondering why, with all this technology, we haven’t found a better way of entering text into a phone.
I’ve seen keyboard trends come and go, from those ergonomic efforts with their wavy shapes, split layouts and weird typing angles, to the currently trendy chiclet style (see what you’re missing at www.snipca.com/18371). I’ve tried soft keys, dicky keys, low-profile keys and backlit keys. I’ve even used the horrific, fuzzy-felt touch keyboard of the original Microsoft Surface - and it was only 75 per cent as hideous as you might have read. When it comes to bad keyboards, I’m something of a connoisseur.
I’ve even had one laptop go kaput because our cat kept clawing the keypad until the keys flipped off. Yet nothing horrifies me as much as the current keyboard grime. I’m attached to my keyboard. It’s the quickest way I know of getting what’s up here in my head into a form other people understand. I guess there’s only one answer. I’ll buy it in black and hope the dirt doesn’t show.