Vanessa And finally…
Dear readers,
I’m not ashamed to admit I didn’t think this internet thing would take off. Actually, I gave the whole online phenomenon almost no thought at all. My mother was dead. My husband had left. There were no grown-ups in the vicinity to bully or boss me into taking technology seriously. Left to my own devices, I simply ignored it successfully for a couple of decades.
I clung to my £8 Nokia. I existed perfectly well without shopping online. I’d go for a mooch around late lamented Debenhams and buy real items I could stroke and try on. I was comfortable paying my bills using cheque, stamp and envelope, and had no desire to bank online. As for social media – I didn’t waste a minute of precious time on it. I read. I thought. Occasionally I gazed into the middle distance doing nothing at all.
The pandemic jolted me out of my prehistoric Luddite idyll. My daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren moved to what they hoped would be safety in a remote Irish hamlet. I was in London working at the BBC. Separated from my beloved family I had no choice but to embrace the technology which would allow me to see their darling faces.
The time had come to invest in a smartphone. For me Facetiming was a Covid miracle. Everyone else took it for granted. They’d all been WhatsApp-ing, co-ordinating supermarket deliveries, alleviating boredom by watching strangers renovating an abandoned chest of drawers and uploading selfies for decades. I was a novice: nervous, incompetent but dazzled. Watching my grandbabies appear, lively and full of beans on my tiny screen was a daily delight. Throughout the fear and fright of the pandemic, technology – though it took me ages to get the hang of it – turned out to be my life raft.
The time had come for a smartphone
I still steered clear of social media. I didn’t want to get involved in all that nonsense. Until I realised whenever I got a gig on TV or radio, bosses wanted me to post about it. When I said, “But I’m not on social media,” they didn’t look intrigued or charmed. They were impatient and disappointed. On January 1 2022 I reluctantly dipped my smallest toe into Instagram. I thought I’d loathe every second. In fact, I took to it immediately. I enjoy making reels. I have fun with my stories. I love the challenge of knowing when and what to post to amuse and involve my 390,000 followers. I know! Just shy of 400,000 followers in just over two years from a standing start. I can’t quite believe it either and I’m over the moon. My other technological love, and I’ve fallen hard for this one, is the versatile, eco-friendly, bliss on a budget air fryer, but that’s another story…
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