The Technoprats

I come from a long line of technoprats. There are people in my family who have only barely mastered the idea of the electric light bulb, let alone how to tweet, DM, Facebook, text or turn on a digital telly. Some of us had just about got the hang of programming the video before DVDs and hard-drives reared their disturbing heads. And as for iPlayer, it's practically a swear-word in my family. (There are elements of Husband's family who are similarly challenged, I should add, for fairness's sake.)

However, technology invades every corner of our lives, and thus we must embrace it, even if it often creates more frustration and confusion than it facilitates and eases things. 

The Aged Ps have gone on holiday, and Mother is distraught that this will mean a moratorium on hourly updates by telephone as to what she and Father are eating, watching, drinking and breathing and what their opinions are on all of the above.

"I like you to know what we're up to," she says during our last conversation. "And I like to know what you're up to, although goodness knows you're always far too busy to bother to tell me - " (Possibly because I'm constantly on the phone listening to what you're up to, I mutter. But under my breath. I know my place.) " - and I like to know what my grandchilddren are up to."
"Yes, Mum," I say, while she is drawing breath in preparation for a full-blown account of the Italian meal in that place-on-the-high-street-which-used-to-be-a-bookshop, do I remember . . .? "The thing is, I'm sometimes a bit pressed for time," I continue, "so a half hour phone call is quite tricky to achieve on a regular basis. How about texting if you have something quick to say?"
WHY OH WHY DID I SUGGEST THIS?

Five minutes into The Aged Ps' car journey (and our School Run) I am receiving multiple texts all saying the same thing: Weee have gt colds. Grks r on strk. Will b Fun on Sun!!

Daughter takes it upon herself to be in charge of my phone whenever I let it out of my sight for so much as a millisecond, so she reads the texts before I do. "Grandma's trying to tell you something," she says, squinting at the screen. "Oh boy! Her texting is sooooo diffcult to understand. And she's sent the same thing three times."

And this from the girl who regularly sends texts that would need the sharpest minds from Bletchley Park to decipher what she means.

I translate for her: "We have got colds. Greeks are on strike: will be fun on Sunday!"

"Why will it be fun if they are on strike?" says Small Boy from his inferior position in the back of the Mini, where he is forced to sit beneath a heap of his sister's bags and musical instruments - and sometimes the dog, if I am taking her running. 

"She's being SARCASTIC, duuur," Daughter explains, helpfully, stretching out her long legs from her privileged position next to me. "Why is Grandma so rubbish at texting? It's not that difficult."
Secretly I agree, but in the interests of sounding balanced and reasonable I say, "Every new generation thinks that older people are rubbish with technology. I expect by the time you're my age there'll be hologram video phones that project a 3-D image of the person who's calling you directly into your house."

"Urgh! I hope not!" shrieks Daughter in disgust. "What if you're on the loo when they call?"

Small Boy pipes up: "Was your grandma rubbish at technology when you were our age, Mum?"

I snort. "There was no such thing as technology in the 70s!" I pause. "Although we did get an answer machine in the 80s and that caused a few problems."
My grandmother couldn't get the hang of the fact that you could simply leave a message: she was convinced that at all times there should be someone speaking back to you if you were on the phone, and so she used to leave huge pregnant pauses between her truncated pronouncements. Our family's all-time favourite was the time she thought we had forgotten to come and collect her for Sunday lunch. She called while we were on our way to get her, and with no preamble whatsoever spoke the following words into the machine:
"Thought I was coming to lunch . . . One o'clock . . . With your mother."

We teased the poor old lady so much about this that she never left another message again.

I wave the children off to school then return to the car to sit and text Mother back. Within seconds I receive another message from her; an email this time, entitled: "Technophobe!" It reads: Sorry about triple text - mobile mucking up.  Dad gets cross with me. 

Although I chortle at the work-woman blaming her tools, it does cross my mind that this is a woman who never worked in an office, avoided the study while the ZXSpectrum was running "in case of radioactivity" and only got a microwave once she had been reassured by Good Housekeeping magazine that it wouldn't cause all her hair to drop out and her eyes to glow in the dark.

For a technoprat, she's not doing that badly.