I pay my teenage grandson to be my IT consultant
Liz Hodgkinson used to live in fear that her computer would crash for ever, taking all her precious documents and emails with it, but then she had an idea
It is just possible that I may be the most technologically advanced woman of advanced years in the whole country. If so, it is all thanks to my 14-year-old grandson Arthur, whose computer skills are such that I have now appointed him my official IT consultant. Because he is so good, I have been able to ditch my expensive IT support people at £60 an hour and employ Arthur at the vastly cheaper – and shamefully exploitative – rate of £5 an hour. But as I remind him, I don’t have to take other IT people out to lunch at Nando’s or to the cinema in the evening. Nor do I have to hang around while they upload yet more games or play Minecraft on Skype with their friends. However, perhaps because of his youthful enthusiasm, not only is Arthur cheaper than the IT people down the road, he is better. After solving my problems, he comes up with ideas of his own, such as putting all my passwords into a keychain and showing me how to send emails straight to their own folders. In fact, he has pinned step-by-step instructions on my noticeboard. In common with many older people who didn’t grow up with computers, I live in hourly fear of them crashing and going down for ever, taking all my precious documents and files with them. Or at least, I did, until Arthur came to my rescue. Since then my technology fears have greatly lessened, if not disappeared altogether. For instance, I recently bought a colour printer and scanner; £450, thank you very much. I lugged it home and was tremendously proud of myself for getting it going as far as printing was concerned. But I could not work out how to work the scanner. “Arthur, could you…?” I started, when he visited. Before I could finish the sentence, he had the scanner up and working, since when I have been impressing all my friends by scanning like mad. They, and my ex-husband, are amazed at my technological know-how. Should I spill the beans and say it’s all thanks to the invisible, but confident, hand of young Arthur? Although at £5 an hour he sounds like a bargain, he is often at my computer for six or seven hours at a time, so can earn a good £30; a welcome sum for a boy of his age. As he says, “I’m doing something I like and getting paid for it; what could be better?” He adds, flatteringly, that he loves spending the day with me, especially as he travels on his own from London to Oxford, like a proper consultant. He arrives professionally with all sorts of chargers, wires and leads, just in case they are needed and I won’t have them, which is probably true. Actually, I do have a hideous tangle of computer-