Sodding technology

Technology frustrates me so much. I’ve no patience. I’ve been known to unplug the printer and threaten to throw it across the room. I haven’t yet followed through on this, but I’ve come close to it. I am aware however that a simple act like this could make me come across as a complete psycho. ‘Charles Dickens didn’t have this sodding problem,’ I mutter.

Let me tell you about the printer, the device I was hoping could produce quality print-outs, so that Mr Big Agent would be really impressed. It’s manufactured by a very well known company and I was impressed with the sales advisor’s pitch when I went in search of a new model.

‘Yes it churns out fifty pages a minute or something like that,’ he said.
‘Wow,’ I replied. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘The print quality’s great too,’ he added.
Better still, I thought. Mr Agent won’t need his glasses as he squints at the botched printing. He’ll be impressed with the quality of the pixels and the glorious sheen, so much so, he’ll e-mail me back and ask me the name of the manufacturer.

(As I drove home, with the printer in the boot, I cast my mind back to the good old days. I got a typewriter from Santa for Christmas 1983, when I was eight. And I loved it. Each night I diligently sat at the breakfast bar and created beautiful asymmetrical lines of:

QWERTYUIOP
ASDFGHJKL
ZXCVBNM

If I made a mistake, I borrowed my mum’s special rubber and erased the mistake. The page, when complete, was so pleasing to the eye. It was the most beautiful square.)

Once the new printer was rigged up, I tried to print my fifty pages/first three chapters. But the useless lump of a thing kept sucking the pages back in, creating a big blob at the bottom of each page. I ended up with thirty spoiled sheets. I was convinced it did this deliberately.

‘Sorry, trees,’ I whispered as I loaded yet more sheets into the tray.

At that point, I wanted to kick the printer, pull the leads out of the back and hurl it across the study. Deep breath.

I think it’s a problem we all encounter at some point in our writing lives – the inability of technology to co-operate. I am comforted by the fact it’s a universal problem. But it sucks up so much time. If only we could journey back to pen, paper and Tippex.

Not impressed with this printer*

*I could be doing something wrong. In all honesty, it’s probably not a manufacturing fault and more to do with the fact I refuse to read installation and instruction manuals.

It was on special offer though and the cynic in me believes that this is the shop’s way of clearing out what falls short of the mark.

Does my ASUS look big in this?

This post is being written using what my forebearers would have called 'new-fangled-technology'.

Now I'm all for technology, new-fangled or otherwise, so long as it educates, informs or makes a life slightly simpler. The modern microwave, the high definition televisions and boil-in-the-bag-rice being prime examples.
On my last day at school I remember looking back over my shoulder as I left the 6th Form Portacabin (every expense spared in 1980) as four burly men carried a big square metallicy-plastic thing each into our design technology building. Even the words Design and Technology, to me, meant absolutely nothing, let alone give me any clue as to what those bulky machines were going to be used for.

Although come the following September my brother two years my junior became insufferable in his delight at having a new addition to his timetable called 'Computer Studies'.  Ha, I thought, that'll probably be just the same as woodwork but with more metallic bits.  And my parents were convinced it'd never catch on.  New fangled nonsense.  Wasting public funds. Flippin' comprehensives. That sort of thing.
And for the first year he did this weird-sounding course, all he seemed to do was bring back little strips of paper with patterns of holes punched through them and binary numbers written in scrawly biro underneath.
Dullsville or what?
He dropped the subject as soon as he could and took up double skive and extra curricular smoking-related activities.

I'd been using a Petite typewriter for a couple of years at home before I found a job in an office, so of course I had the necessary 'typing experience' when I landed the prestigious role of  Q.A Technician at our local Texas Instruments.  It was like walking onto the set of Space 1999.  Not only did everyone have  badges with their names, faces and codes on them, these 'keys' were also used to enter corridors and areas that I only had the necessary clearance for once a month.  And we'll have no sniggering about the Menses Room, please.
Oh yes, here, on the last Friday of every month I was allowed, permitted, cleared even, to sit at a screen (like a telly - a TELLY!) and tap numbers out on a keyboard and watch them come up in neon green on the screen - and then type in a name and a code at the top and then press a key and it would be sent halfway across the world.  Oh, VDU's where did you go? 
And the day TI started selling the first calculator (a snip at £49.50) was the day I thought I'd died and gone to heaven - not that I really needed one now that I wasn't at school anymore and crying over algorithms and friggin' fractions, but what they hey, I'd have one anyway.
The dawning of a new generation - and I was proud to be part of it.


So I've never been shy of  modern technology.  I remember typewriters being manual, then golf-balled and daisy-wheeled - a different daisy-wheel for itallic font!  Does anyone else recall the machines where one line of text came up on a little screen atop the keyboard and then printed the line out mad-fast when you pressed the 'Return' button? And the first time I was given a proper full-sized screen, keyboard, floppy disk drive and laser printer was the day I could have stayed at work 24 hours without pay.  I loved it.  I lapped it all up, this new fangled stuff that was happening in the world.


And so to celebrate half a century on earth, I have been given what I can only describe as something beautiful and wondrous with which I can just about do anything.  Write, read, mail, listen to music, video-call my Australian family, you name it... well, okay then, it won't reheat a chilly brew but that's a minor consideration and one that I'm perfectly willing to overlook.

Besides which, technology and me and a cup of tea.....?  You just don't want to know.