Grand opening

I have Done It.

I have opened my new computer.

I am not writing on it to you now because that would just be too scary and difficult. I am writing to you on the old one because it is safe and I know which keys stick.

I rushed round this morning to get everything done before I opened it. I washed all the pots and made the children’s breakfasts and went to the butcher’s and took the dogs for a long walk up the fell, because if they are not tired then they are a pestiferous nuisance. Then I mopped the kitchen and did all the laundry until in the end I was completely guilt-free.

The children buzzed off to the gym. Then I bought myself some peace and quiet by giving the dogs some exciting bones begged from the butcher’s shop, to further delay the pestiferous nuisance moment, and skipped up the stairs to open the boxes.

There were a lot of boxes. Well, it wasn’t that there were a lot of boxes, more that there was one extremely complicated box which seemed to unfold out into enough cardboard clutter to cover the whole desk and most of the floor. I have not cleared it up yet and am writing to you from the middle of a colossal pile of artistically-designed minimalistically-streamlined packaging.

There are computers all over the place. There is an old one, lying insensible and bruised after having been pillaged for its SIM card. There is a smugly-gleaming new one which is too shiny and perfect to touch, and there is this one. This is the big one on the desk, and which I have under my control, in the way of a performing lion in the circus.

The new computer is dazzlingly, shatteringly beautiful. It has a screen which is so clear and perfect that it makes my eyes water to look at it. It is a machine far beyond even the most futuristic sciencey-imaginings of fanciful films of my youth. It leaps into action at my lightest touch, and is elegant perfection.

It does not need me to remember which code I am supposed to bash into it, clumsily, when intoxicated. It does not even require my fingerprints.

It actually recognises my face.

It knows who I am. It is not going to give up its secrets just for any old curious idiot. It will only tell me, and it even recognises me with my glasses on.

I am very impressed.

Obviously I do not think I have worked it all out. I spent a very long time trying to get it to understand that it might want to use Microsoft Word, but it doesn’t, or at any rate it won’t until I give it another hundred quid, which is tiresome. It is still just a bit strange and unfamiliar. I expect I will get used to it.

In the end the dogs finished their bones and stood at the bottom of the barricaded stairs and whimpered for me to come down, so I gave in. Fortunately Rosie is almost not in season any more. This has been a brilliant thing from the point of view of going for walks, because Roger Poopy’s rascally father has forgotten all about his dodgy hips and weary bones, and sprints along after her as if he were hoping for Paralympic selection.  This has saved me endless frustrating hanging about writing for him and yelling, fruitlessly for him to hurry up.

All the same, I won’t be sorry when it is all over. Roger Poopy, as you know, has been converted to being a eunuch, but the other day I got so cross with his father that eventually I tied him up to stop his wicked seduction attempts. Roger Poopy, who is truly horrid, spent some time working out the exact length of his father’s lead and then lured little Rosie to just beyond its reach. He Did The Deed right there, just out of his poor frustrated father’s frantically snarling reach.

There can be no excuse. He knew exactly what he was doing. He is a villain.

I have set some photographs of my morning walks as my screensavers, and so I have shared one with you here.