Computers area 'bl** dy' menace
t’s as I said to Gideon ( he’s the whiz kid who thumps and kicks my computer back into shape every time it wanders off on its ‘ HI there, we’re upgrading your PC says the voice of some cloying informant), I didn’t want one in the first place. I was happy with fingering my sit- up- and- beg Imperial typewriter and then, when it dropped to bits, my ‘ word processor’.
Both did the same job, but one was a bit faster. However, a Yorkshire technology ‘ up to date’ genius friend insisted that I should get on the ball and swap to a computer. I flatly refused to take his advice several times but he kept bothering me.
Ultimately, he drove all the way from the wrong side of the Humber to Villajoyosa, where I had recently moved to, and hauled with him a load of technological bits and pieces that I was told sort of comprised a computer. His excuse for being both insistent and a pain in the ar* e was that he’d refurbished his office with more up- to- date techno gear and decided that rather than dump this out dated miracle of electronic office gear, he decided to present it to me for nowt!
Obviously, I would have been barmy to turn it down… and graceless too!
Computers were not two a penny in those days so I had to accept the bounty with a rather fixed smile. Like it or lump it I had been pressurised into becoming an amateur technology nerd!
Between us, we lugged the ‘ gift’ and its attachments up to my lofty top floor pad, shoved it onto the rarely used kitchen table and thirstily knocked back a couple of bottles of Mahou. “Right” said Peter, now somewhat refreshed, “Let’s have a couple of sets”.
We were both clout and run tennis players and the Paraiso courts were handy, just five minutes’ walk away from Sainvi, where I lived, so I had no escape route but I tried.
“Hold on a minute or two”, I said as he headed for the lift. “Hang on, now you’ve lumbered me with this H. G. Wells robotic miracle machine, you’d better show me how the bugger works.”
Peter choked with beer burbling laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he spluttered.
“I haven’t a clue. I’ve never used one in my life. My office girls to do that sort of work. When they’re not making tea or up grading their make- up.”
Then seriously, he growled, “Come on now Smithy… I want a game before it gets dark!”
So we progressed, hit a few balls, chatted a bit and lubricated our throttles with more Mahou. At the crack of dawn next day, though he was up with the larks ( or were they seagulls) and after a ‘ butifarra’ breakfast he was hitting the road back to the East Riding. I was richer by a computer, keyboard and printer… but with absolutely no idea how to kick start it!
A lot of time has elapsed since then but despite numerous aggravations I taught myself to read minimised English and I am shamefully beginning to understand the foibles necessary to do battle with a computer, but…….. here’s the rub, I am now regularly being directed by the machinations of a hunk of technology which is not merely a machine. It is an automat ( substitute ME) which is slowly but surely becoming less and less of a live person and more of a magnetic lure in the way that a plastic, feathered fly ( as in insect) is to a trout angler. However, my lexicon in hand, I still have to be tempted to succumb to using cropped, crippled and horribly disguised English. Pie in the sky dreaming and a clamped down situation would be handy and less of a pressure point if the use of electricity were banned at certain times of day forcing obsessed PC nerds to rest.
Of course, this possibility is a NO- NO. Due to the advent of super batteries which are rechargeable at the drop of a hat and last for yonks, the windmill powering sparks do just as much of a job and pain in the a+* e. My other moan is about the ‘ computer speak’ instructions, which I suppose will eventually try to supplant the English language. I reckon Isaac Pitman did a better job in the gobbledegook field though with his shorthand invention. To be able to make notes on the spot with an HB pencil and a handy notebook to scrawl in may have been more onerous but I preferred them. It was akin to using a private code that no one could eyeball and was technology free! Old dogs do not like new tricks,
Needless to say, my biggest computer irritation today hits blindly at random times. Some giggly girlie voice squeaks ‘ Don’t Switch Off, we are updating your machine’ whether you like it or no’. Before you can respond, the screen goes blank for however much time THEY required for their ( helpful?) exercise and sod you.
Whatever you’re currently working on is summarily disregarded ( this happened to me for almost two hours last week) but luckily I had done a bit of notebook and lead pencil scribbling earlier or this opinion of computers and other techno brain saving devices would not have made it into this edition.