Here I was dwelling in an increasingly damp England, not feeling that bright or brown or glorious, pining for a job in a warm climate but as yet having little luck in finding the right teaching post. Of course, I had listened to friends telling me I was lucky that there had been well over a month of sunshine so I should not moan but they did not have a computer that was coughing, spluttering and theatrically enjoying its demise; they were not looking for a job and receiving regular rejections, 37 at the last count; they were not approaching 50 with unnerving speed; and, they were not suffering the humiliation of a declining and mutinous tennis forehand, which looped the ball over the baseline mockingly.
So, into this damp world on Friday 13th, not supposedly a propitious date for anything but adversity and misfortune, arrived a dose of good luck and ‘fine weather’. In a rather stark small cardboard box arrived something new, gleaming, black and slim. Rather than greeting what the ‘stork had brought’ with jealousy and anxiety – the contrast between it and myself (older, dulling, paler and fatter) – I was immensely relieved to meet my new Asus computer…surely a line for an advertisement? For the first few minutes, I played with the boxes and wrapping like some child at Christmas more impressed with the cover than the contents but this was a primitive fear of new fangled, technical things rather than youthfully naive entertainment. Finally, I was brave, connected and switched on. To my utter relief it was terribly simple and I was in ‘QWERTY’ piano mode very swiftly – the keys not sticky and heavy as with my old device but crisp and certain.
So the mission for this computer, should it choose to accept it and it will, is to prowl the internet to find jobs, create teaching materials to impress potential employers and entice me to be more adventurous. As yet, however, it has not slowed my progress to 50, it has not made the rain stop and my forehand remains an embarrassment but it is new, gleaming, black and slim despite arriving in a damp world.
