Sample

MANUAL COFFEE

CLUTTON-SMITH eased back the joy-stick that operated his neurons to give them time to cool down, after his introduction to his first second-user PC, at the ripe (not to say senile) age of 85. He had spent half an hour trying to find a Making Coffee icon before he realised he would have to make it manually. He swore a solemn oath in pithy Anglo-Saxon to read between the bottom lines of the smallest print at the next update.

Mind you, he was not completely green. He had had a battered old second/third/or fourth-hand Windows 3.1 for a couple of years, but after two or three short lessons from family members, had failed to practise what they had preached. After getting so tangled up that he sometimes took half an hour to get out of some obscure programme before shutting down, he gave it up and did all his word-processing on a Starwriter 300.

But the fates intervened. In a busy period of fairly urgent correspondence, the Starwriter did him dirt by failing to print. The fates certainly knew what they were doing, because only a week before they had produced this second-user Windows 98. For a week this machine had lain as dormant as the 3.1 had for two years. He saw the writing on the wall (in Times New Roman: “Are you a man or a mouse?” Realising that he was too big to be thought of as a mouse (while uncomfortable with the thought of its larger look-a-like), he realised that this was the point of no return.

To press the Return Key or not : that was the question. He juggled his neurons into some semblance of order, and pressed various keys on his keyboard. After a few minutes he realised he had not switched on. Apprehensive that the machine might blow up, he wondered how he could switch on while putting his fingers in both ears. Eventually, the thought of computerised coffee gave him the courage to connect, and half an hour later was back in his armchair with his feet up, his manual coffee by his side, and the manual opened at page 1 before his weary eyes. Blessed relief came in ten seconds as his neurons went into auto-shut-down.

KEYBOARD CALAMITIES

ON HIS WAY home from his first PC lesson, Clutton-Smith wondered whether in the foreseeable future envious fellow pupils would say of him “there goes Bill Gates”.

One of the last TV adverts he had seen before a merciful nature closed those weary eyes in an unusually troubled sleep, showed a screen awash with myriads of 0s and 1s. His neurons felt as though they had been pushed backwards and forwards at an incredible rate. Had he over-dosed his favourite late-night coffee? Before he could remember if he had miscounted the spoonfuls, a computer screen shimmered before him, and a faintly American voice said, “Come on, Bill, give it the works”.

After fiddling about for what seemed like 10 minutes, he managed to open up Cornish Express, and after 2 more minutes managed to click on e-rail (which puzzled him because he did not think that the West country rail had been electrified). After pouring over the keyboard which appeared to contain a mixture of Hittite (or was it Sumerian?) cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and characters from earliest Phœnician and Kirillic to classical Trajan, he struggled to compose his very first e-rail. Whom should he favour? “Go to the goddam top, boy” came to his aid. “What’s his goddam address?” responded C-S, doing his best top cultivate a nasal twang.

At that critical moment, when according to next morning’s papers the Middle East was balanced on a knife edge, the cat, which must have been feeling neglected, leapt up and landed what appeared to be squarely on the keyboard. A stickler for accuracy, C-S rechecked the facts, and established that the left rear paw had landed on Ctrl, the right rear paw on Alt, and the left font paw on Delete, appearing to indicate that the cat had scalene tendencies.

Somewhat relieved to find that he was reprieved to e-rail another day, he gave the cat an extra saucer of milk, and treated himself to an extra spoonful in a brand new mug of coffee.

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