In my day there was only one computer ...Ernie

THE fact that I’ve let new technology slip through my fingers is becoming an increasing hindrance.

I am a silver surfer who has not yet learned to surf.

I am increasingly precluded from buying items, supporting causes or even writing to local newspapers because organisations refuse to accept my words on paper.

This is unfair on someone brought up in age when there was only one computer – ERNIE, a piece of kit the size of a football field that spat out Premium Bond numbers.

My inability to grasp social media provides fellow journalists in our office – seven of them are younger than the jumper I’m currently wearing – with much merriment.

The IT team, who bear the brunt of my many requests, cannot hide their frustration.

They asked me to come up with a seven-character password. I chose the seven dwarfs.

They asked me to tweet. I chose the courtship call of the skylark, and stood on a chair while whistling it.

The Sunday Mercury has, to its credit, tried to drag me in to the 21st century through a battery of training courses. They have all been disasters. By day two of last year’s embarrassing seminar, fellow classmates had created a flowchart. I’d managed to switch on my computer.

I did learn something from the excruciating course. The vending machine button that was supposed to liberate Twix Bars didn’t work.

I briefly flirted with Facebook, but walked away because the photographs of everybody else’s dinner were better than mine. I think they used professional cod fillets.

A sole computer at my home is my only acknowledgement to 2018. It is ancient, but has served me well. Hats off to Sir Alan Sugar.

In fact, it is so old that when it broke down the IT chap urged me to pedal faster.

It used to be steam-powered. When we logged on, we actually put a log on and lit it.

I have never pretended to be computer-savvy. When mine tells me I’ve got mail, I open the front door and check.

When I first got the thing, I rang a help desk and explained I’d put my foot down on the white pedal but nothing happened.

“That,” said a distant voice, “is the mouse.”

It’s doubtless a wonderful tool, though. How else would I receive unsolicited emails from someone called Olga who pledges to make me go all night?

I’ve sent a polite reply, thanking the woman for her concern but pointing out that, thanks to All Bran and lashings of tinned prunes, I’m already regular as clockwork, if more of a morning person.

In recent days, however, my computer has shown signs of giving up the ghost.

Every time I switch the thing on, the screen fills with dire warnings that a virus has been detected.

This has made the IT chap tut loudly.

“Do you get a lot of spam mail?” he asked.

Spam have sent nothing, but Fray Bentos told me if I collected enough labels off corned beef tins there was a chance of winning a trip to Buenos Aires.

“Last time you had trouble,” said the computer wizard, “I warned you not to open mail with salacious titles from people with bizarre, often suggestive, names. You followed my advice?”

I shuffled uncomfortably before admitting that twice curiosity got the better of me.

“One said ‘Now she will no longer laugh at you in the bedroom, little man’,” I confessed. “I thought it was from someone who overheard my wife gossiping.”

There was a silence before the IT expert again turned his attention to rapidly multiplying virus alerts cascading down the screen.

“Clever! Very clever,” he whispered, smiling knowingly. “Mikey Boy, you don’t mind me calling you Mikey Boy, do you?” I prefer plain old Mike. “Plain old Mike it is,” he chirped almost to himself while fiddling with leads at the back of the computer. “Plain old Little Man Mike...”

“Those messages,” he announced smugly, “warning you of a virus aren’t really warning you of a virus.”

He tapped the screen for dramatic effect. “Those messages warning you of a virus ARE actually the virus. “Has your mouse been playing up?” “Are you serious,” I asked defensively, “or are you still on the ‘little man’ insults?”

“I’m going to remove the ball from the mouse and blow the fluff out.”

He removed the casing and peered into the cavity. “It’s full of the stuff,” he moaned. “Have you been rubbing it against your belly button?”

I assured him I hadn’t. “Good, it really tickles,” said the computer guru. “Reboot and reboot and reboot again.” He did. It still didn’t work. He blew his cheeks out. “I can fix it, but you may lose everything.”

Everything! Bloody computers. I mean, what’s the point? If something goes wrong there’s never a Plan B.

“Listen,” he pointed out. “If the motor industry had made the same progress as computers have over the last decade, you’d now be travelling in a car with a top speed of 10,000 miles an hour, that weighed less than two stone, and did 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

I thought hard before asking: “Would you drive something that crashed three times a day?”