It's been hard to work for the sound in the house the last few days: cough, cough, cough, splutter, splutter, splutter. This time it's not us that are ill though.

[More:]

Instead, the noise is down to our supposedly new computer. Of course, it isn't actually new. My brother-in-law has kindly just put a new hard drive into the old machine, which probably explains the noise! Still, it is great to have a proper computer again, even if I would never have believed how much its absence would affect my life.

The whole thing has set me thinking (always bad news!) about my childhood and how life has changed so dramatically in such a comparatively short space of time. I can just about remember life before computers. It wasn't until I was about ten that we had our first machine. My parents scrimped and saved to buy a family Acorn Electron, the more affordable version of the BBC computer. Of course, like mobile phones, that was nothing by today's standards. It's ten years this year since I finished university and in all that time I never had a mobile phone. Of course, there were a few students who did even then, but I was with the majority in not having one. I expect most students these days would probably feel they couldn't survive without one!

Things move so fast these days, I often wonder what's going to be next. Still, I don't suppose it matters much so long as they've perfected electric/electronic dentures and zimmer frames by the time I need them!;-)