Ask me about the reproductive cycle of the earthworm and I’m your woman; engage me in conversation about obscure 1960s British psychedelia and my eyes will light up. But talk to me about technology and I want to run to the hills and hide in a treehouse where the only signals I can receive are from the birds and the butterflies… that’s ok, I speak their language. The other stuff, the bytes and the apps and the nano SIMS, just aren’t my bag.
And it’s hard to be like this, don’t you think? It’s an easy,
lazy excuse to say it’s just an age thing, as I don’t believe it is. My dad, for instance, has always been very technologically
minded; he keeps up-to-date and understands it all, no problem - he’s 93. But I never have been, I’m just not wired that
way. My brain seems to effortlessly absorb facts
about the mating rituals of snails and tells my hand how to draw (on paper) every day, but
goes into panic mode when faced with questions about synching data and sharing
app contents via NFC or whatever it is. Is it so wrong to feel like that, is it
so strange? I feel quite out of step thanks to the way my mind works much of the time. I can look out of a window for hours and not tire of it for one second, but with only a phone in
front of me to scroll through I would be bored in no time. I honestly don’t know how people manage it.
As a result, I’m an
avoider, and hence instead of doing things incrementally I’m now having to make (what feels like) a massive
leap from a 9 year old phone which started playing up last week to something
far more sophisticated than I deserve. I
got butterflies thinking about it, I could feel the stress levels rise, a sense
of resistance – it’s ridiculous, I know.
There’s only one thing for it - I
must find a way to make it exciting…
To paraphrase Maya Angelou, "... if you can't change it, change your attitude". I’m getting there. It's shiny! It’s a gorgeous, sumptuous shade of red! I mean, yes, it is aesthetically pleasing, I must admit. And… it performs magic! Ooh, plus I’ve bought a snappy leather case for it too. Whoo hoo! All I have to do (when my network upgrade finally gets activated…therein lies another tale) is to switch it on. And just hope that somehow, in some small way, it will switch me on too.
Here's 'Reality Poem', with its line that I borrowed for the title of this post, by Linton Kwesi Johnson, from the superb 'Forces of Victory' album which, quite shockingly, is now 43 years old.
