Keeping up leaves me feeling down

IN A mixture of keeping up with the Joneses and trying desperately to keep up with the 21st century, you might find yourself in a place so alien to your usual environment that you are finding it hard to breathe normally while remaining upright.

A computer shop. While perfectly at home in a book shop or a cake shop, being in a computer shop is like being in a nuclear submarine — it all looks impressive and intimidating and you dare not touch anything. Still. You can’t march onwards in life, being a modern citizen, while still carrying pen and paper around in your bag, can you? Writing people’s phone numbers down on the back of till receipts is so last century. Time to get with the present.

“I’d like an iPad please,” you might say commandingly, looking the geek straight in the eye the way you would an unpredictable dog. Trying to keep the tremor of fear out of your voice. Really, you have no idea what an iPad is, or what it does, but your friend has one and she seems to be able to work hers quite nicely. And it fits in her handbag, unlike the clunking great apparatus that lives on your desk, with its television-sized screen and giant keyboard. Yes, it is time to get modern.