![]() ![]() It came as a boost at just the right moment, sending me home with a dash of Helene Hanff’s dauntless appetite for life and books, infected with her curiosity as to whether ‘the England of English literature’ could actually be found. It was there, in the sunshine in Central Park, that I first read 84, Charing Cross Road - a battered old paperback edition I had discovered in the apartment of the friend I was staying with. Within days I discovered that I loved working with words and, despite a meager salary, employment on a glossy magazine had its perks – including, in the spring of 1988, a free ticket to New York. Secretarial instruction was delivered over headphones to classrooms full of women and as I tried to follow the disembodied tutorials my fingers kept slipping and jamming between the keys of a hefty, black manual typewriter.įortunately for me, just as the course was finishing, a job as subeditor at Harpers & Queen fell into my lap. In 1988, when I was 23, I spent a miserable three months there doing a typing course on the bleak first floor of a building next to the Garrick Theatre. I thought I could never feel fond of Charing Cross Road, London. ![]()
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