MY PHONE’S BEEN
SWIPED
Belle gets to grips with
technology
The world of hi-tech has long been a mystery to
me, but since the dawn of the twenty-first
century I have made something of an effort to
get up-to-date. And I discovered that what I
thought of as new technology is considered old
hat by the rest of the world. People are moving
on from Facebook before I’ve even been
seduced into trying it, although from my
Personal Handyman‘s comments when he’s on
Facebook, I wonder what the point is.
Apparently all his ‘friends’ witter on about how
bored they are, while the younger ones (mainly
teens/twenties relatives) post ‘glamour’ shots of
themselves to show off their tattoos.
Tattoos – don’t get me started! All I’ll say is that
now that I’m (just) past my prime, I’m mighty
glad that in my earlier years I resisted the
temptation of a ‘discreet rosebud’ on my
posterior, which by now would have blossomed
into an overblown rose, requiring updating by
the tattooing of several wrinkly petals falling
down the back of my leg, and which, now I think
about it, interspersed with the existing collection
of blue veins, might make quite a colourful
picture when wearing shorts on my holidays.
But I digress…
Technology: a few weeks back we were cut off
from the rest of humanity when we lost our
phone line and broadband, on and off, but
mainly off, for a fortnight. We were reduced to
speaking to people face to face.
One evening at choir rehearsal, complaining
about our isolation, we were brought up short.
“Why on earth haven’t you got a smartphone?”
said a younger friend (not a ‘friend’, no, a real
one). “Why not, indeed?” we asked ourselves.
The next day or the day after (at my age I can’t
always be sure) PH and I high-tailed it down to
O2 to trade in our ancient mobile phones for
spanking new smartphones that apparently do
everything except make the tea in the morning.
Due to my absolute refusal to accept secondbest, we acquired matching phones* (What we
refer to as ‘Howard and Hilda’, for those of you
who remember ‘Ever-decreasing circles’),
which then of course required distinctive cases
so we’d know which was which. As Henry Ford
famously said, “You can have any colour as
long as it’s black”. Add to that “or has cute
pictures of kittens, or ‘Princess’ in glitter”.
Phone accessories are the new accessory!
Since smartphones and iPads came out, I have
to say that the ‘swipe’ has impressed me every
time I’ve seen it, in exactly the same way that
cigarette smoking did back in the sixties. It was
cool! Now with my new smartphone I would be
able to sit in pubs casually ‘swiping’ and
examining my ‘apps’. But I realise now, that
what I thought was people being cool, was
actually people silently saying “How does this
thing work?” You see, they no longer give you
a little booklet with all the relevant instructions.
You have to download the stuff. Which means
finding out how the thing works first! Before you
know how it works!
And what with ‘sync-ing’ with the computer (yes,
’fraid so: I’ve still got a desktop, not even a
laptop, and certainly not a tablet or whatever
they’re called) well… where to start? PH, of
course, already has all his apps installed, not to
mention his frequent use of ‘the cloud’. I can see
I’ve got a lot of studying ahead of me before I get
full use of this apparatus. In fact, since obviously
the world will have moved on (to ESP?) by the
time I’ve cracked it, why don’t I just ditch it now?
I will, as soon as I’ve SMS-ed my ‘friend’.
Belle Walker
*Wouldn’t you just know it? PH’s phone had a
screen fault, so we took it back three days later,
only to find that the model had been withdrawn.
Naturally, his replacement had to be the top of
the range.
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