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My cat walks into the spare bedroom in my house. It is 1994. It is late morning. I am at school. My dad is at work. My mum is hoovering downstairs in the living room. It is her day off from work. My cat jumps up onto the desk in the spare bedroom. Someone has left the computer on. The computer is running Microsoft Word. My cat walks across the keyboard. My cat types ‘Dkljfsljfsljfklsjklfsdjkluijgieiwnpa’ into Word. My cat treads on the return key. My cat walks back the other way across the keyboard. It types, ‘Ldklshnfioanvoianvoaidifiudsfo’ into Word. My cat walks repeatedly up and down the keyboard, occasionally pressing the return key on the way. My cat presses the Ctrl and S keys simultaneously with its paws. It jumps off the desk and walks out of the spare bedroom. It walks into my room and jumps up onto the end of my bed. My cat licks its body for a while then falls asleep. Later on I get home from school and my dad comes home from work and we all eat dinner together in the living room and watch TV. Before going to bed, my dad walks into the spare bedroom. He has a feeling he left the computer on. He sees writing on the computer screen and feels confused. He tries to turn off the computer but accidentally presses the Ctrl and P keys on the keyboard. The computer prints out the document. My dad becomes annoyed. He says, ‘Bloody hell’ under his breath. He tears the sheet out of the printer, opens the window and throws the sheet out of it. The sheet of paper floats directly into the hand of Alice Quinn, who happens to be walking down my street as part of a short holiday in England. Alice Quinn looks at the sheet of paper and then says, ‘This is amazing,’ out loud. She publishes the following poem in the April, 1994 issue of The New Yorker:


Document 1

Dkljfsljfsljfklsjklfsdjkluijgieiwnpa
Ldklshnfioanvoianvoaidifiudsfo
Jksldjfksdgiuiodgiosugsdiogiodsgio
Gdkjgkd
Kgdhldshgldshgkldsgklhdshgds
Hdjslkggdpsssssgssgs.