Techno Fatigue

My pal got a right telling off at the weekend on Facebook from his son. He's not good at keeping in touch and when he tried to correct this by sending a friendly informative message to said son, it only got worse: he posted information about his movements on Facebook for the next few months. For the whole world to see. Security-wise. that's a no-no.

Another friend has never got over the days of mobile phone shorthand. You know the style: 'I wnt u 2 no I'm ok. How r u?' She has never got the hang of prescriptive text on her phone. Nor can she handle Messenger on Facebook.

My friend's husband took months to understand Facebook (I'm not sure he does even now), despite his techno-savvy daughter going to the house and organising a couple of seminars with him. I don't think she got to the point of calling him 'thick', though I wouldn't be at all surprised.

These friends are what I will call elderly - although they will be dead annoyed that I use that word about them. They have - in my opinion - reached the point of techno fatigue: technology keeps on moving on and they just can't keep up.

I'm approaching that point myself. I've never had anything to do with instagram and only got into Friends Reunited a couple of months before it shut down, so that solved that problem. I don't do eBay, Amazon Marketplace, Airbnb or Uber. I do wordpress but it's always going wrong. And I absolutely hate the faff of passwords: 8 characters, one with a capital letter, 2 numbers, etc. Well, you've been through it too.

But now I'm fighting with my smart TV. Great picture. Great sound. Installation was a dream - well, someone else did it for me. Then I realised I was having problems getting my remote headphones to work (I've got mastoiditis and am now permanently deaf in one ear). I called in the techie boy - my nephew Craig. It didn't take him long to work out - well, he cheated and read the instructions - that this telly is smart but not smart enough to take headphones. I would need an amplifier.

Isn't that what rock musicians use? Yes indeed. Craig is just such a musician. On Christmas Day, he presented his elderly auntie with a big Debenham's bag full of goodies: a wee dinky amplifier, something called a 6.35mm adapter and the biggest collection of wires, plugs and sockets I've ever seen (see above). He texted me a few days later: was I getting to grips with it? To be honest, I'd looked at all the paraphernalia and looked at the back of the telly and decided this was not for me. It's all back in the bag.

We're talking here about a person who took my sister's iron to bits because it was faulty and put it all back together - and, I hasten to add, got it working. The only problem was, there was a wee bit left over. And I still don't know what it was for.

So now I'm waiting for Craig to make a housecall. He tells me January is his quiet month. (The band doesn't take bookings then so they can get a break from a 7-day schedule of either playing or rehearsing). Now I've got a fortnight to get hold of him before the band madness starts up again.

And yes, I know it will take him 10 minutes to connect all this up. And I know I could ask my brother Bill or my pal Geoff to do it but I'm not going to!

Here's Craig - he scrubs up well, eh?