Age

I have just been doing some computer-related problem solving which involved checking my Autofill and iCloud contacts.

During this excitement I was distracted by noticing the self-taken picture attached to the account.

I do not much like having my picture on computer-related things, partly in case the CIA ever start investigating me and are consequently able to recognise me in the street, and partly because the picture inevitably looks absolutely awful. It is not possible to look fat on a passport style photograph, so on these I just look elderly.

I remember being horrified at just how very elderly I appeared, on the long ago day when I took the picture and attached it to the iCloud account. I had put it there because Apple had told me Attach A Picture. At this moment, rather disconcertingly, the computer screen suddenly turned into a mirror.

It was a more innocent age, so I clicked on the button obediently, and there it was, a self-created identity card, dispatched to Silicon Valley for them to store in their records, along with my taste in shoes, preference for British films, and liking for cotton sheets.

I know that they know all this stuff, because they send me adverts for it all. Indeed, the Google chap in the television is listening so carefully that we only need to mention to one another that we would like to purchase something, and he tells everybody that he knows. He seems to know a lot of people. The very next time I switch on my computer, I am besieged by helpful advertisements, directing me to the best sort of places to purchase that very thing.

I don’t know what I would do without him. He seems to know my shoe size and my bra size and everything. Even Mark does not remember so much about me.

Today when I noticed the picture I was mildly dispirited to notice how youthful and uncrumpled was the online face that I have been displaying to the world, and how few grey hairs surrounded it. I have inadvertently, and simply through lack of interest, been showing the world a ten-years-younger self. If people see it and then meet me the first thing they will notice about me is my cyber-vanity.

I resolved to take it down and change it for a more current version, except I haven’t quite managed to work out how you do this, now that the handy Apple Set-up Guide is no longer there to direct me through it. I will have to ask one of the children next time they are visiting.

Indeed I am actually becoming elderly. The children are all grown up now. Lucy is twenty one, and even Oliver, who is still a toddler in my inner musings, will be sixteen next week. The eldest two have become so settled into adulthood that I have stopped keeping track of quite how many years I have had them around.

Number Two Daughter has grown-up so much that she rang up this morning with an exciting tale of a house which they have seen, and are hoping to buy.

This is not as simple as it might be, because somebody else has already seen the house and made an offer, and in Canada, which is where they are, you cannot just wickedly dash in and scupper somebody else’s cherished daydream with a higher offer. I imagine that this is because they are socialists in Canada.

Number Two Daughter is not a socialist but is still not allowed to be a market force, and so she has got to wait to see if the other offer falls through, which apparently it might. This is a nail-biting moment and we will not know the result until Friday. They have got a mortgage agreed and everything, so if their offer is accepted they can steam ahead and be home-owners as soon as the papers have been signed. I do not know how long this takes in Canada.

In the meantime I have got everything crossed. They need a house so that they can get a dog. Obviously it is absolutely time that they had a dog.

I will keep you posted. Imagine having a daughter with her very own house in Canada. I will be able to go and have holidays there in my old age.

Not long to go now.