Here follows a public service announcement. You will have noticed that all other columnists in this newspaper have a funny little hieroglyphic thing at the foot of their articles. No such device is beneath the Diary, though the Editor has been harrumping about the absence of one and tapping his feet with meaning. It is not my personal delinquency alone which is responsible for there being no thingummy@irishtimes.ie. There are two other reasons for this. One is my personal inability to send an email successfully from The Irish Times. The other is my rusting, clanking computer at home, on which I produce much of what I write. It is unable to link with the Net without extensive reconstruction.
Computer illiterate
I bought this machine in 1995 from Compustore. Being then as computer literate as a Tibetan yak, I threw myself on the mercy of the salesman. "Help me," I said. "I know nothing about computers." He started speaking Persian to me. I halted him with an imperious wave of the hand. "You do not understand," I told him. "I understand absolutely nothing about computers; absolutely nothing." (For I was not the genius, the Kevin Gates, that you see before you now). He resorted to another dialect of Compuspeak, one which resembled Finnish. "Nope," I said. "Still not getting it."
"Do you understand the difference between Windows 95 and Windows 3.1," he asked, with a little one-born-every-minute catch in his voice. "I'm sorry," I replied. "I was under the impression this was a computer store, not a glaziers." At this point, a glint shone from his eye like moonlight catching a shard of glass. "Tell me, have you even heard of Windows?' he asked. "That is, in connection with computers?"
No, I had not. Windows were merely fenestral things for seeing through while keeping out the wind. Wiping tears of joy from his cheeks, this Compustore salesman steered me towards a computer. It had, as I now know, Windows 3.1. "This is the one for you," said my new-found friend. Something approaching intelligence stirred in the pool of mud which is my brain, and I asked: "What about that computer there? It has Windows 95. Is that better or worse than a Windows 3.1?"
I will tell you frankly that I did not know then and I do not know now what a Window is in this sense. The word is wholly bereft of meaning for me. It might just as well be spelt xmgaetea. I do not know what Windows is, does, looks like, smells like. I do not know whether it plays football, milks cows, fells trees, goes to the toilet or has sexual intercourse with pigs. It is more completely foreign to me than Pluto's moons. All I knew was that there was a Windows 95 and a Windows 3.1, and I threw myself on the mercy of the Compustore salesman. "Please," I said, "guide me on this. Tell me which one to buy."
Straight face
Managing to repress a belly-laugh that was forming inside him like a baby elephant, and with a face as straight as knitting needle, he sold me a 3.1: and what is more, not even at a penny's discount.
In other words, he sold me a Ford Anglia with the engine block gone and the gearbox slipping at the same price for which I could have got one of the spanking new Ford Kas alongside it. When he tells this tale at his club - The Spivs, Touts and Pssst Meester, You Vont Sum Feelthy Peeectures - he is reduced to tears of helpless laughter when he adds that, to top the deal, he sold me a prototype printer which Gutenberg had rejected as being too old, stupid and slow. And then, he says, finishing his little story, ha ha ha, heee heee heee, what did the eejit (c'est moi) do, but thank me. HO, HO, HO, HO.
Gales of laughter promptly demolish the club walls, and club members clamour for my address.
Now. This means when somebody sends me an email, as they sometimes do, even though there is no funny @ whoojit at the bottom of this column, and I am at home, and using my Windows 3.1 Ford Anglia, I log into The Irish Times computer, their message is downloaded into my computer. In communication terms, this is the equivalent of being dropped down a deep borehole and concreted over. I have no means of replying, especially since e-mailers never think of appending their telephone numbers in their messages.
Can't reply
Worse, by downloading the message into my cross between a Ford Anglia and an oilwell, I have taken the message from The Irish Times computer. So I can't even reply on those few occasions when I slink into the office to fill in my expenses claim and drool over my younger female colleagues (as befits a man of my age and habits), and, of course, attend to incoming messages.
I am thinking of getting a new computer; but merely thinking of it. At least I know how to work my 3.1 Ford Anglia, and I cannot bear to have to learn now to drive a Windows Whatever, with power steering and so on. In the meantime, my regrets to Mark Russell, Shane Conway, Liz Doyle, John Oman, Matthew Turner, and the Vibrant Plant Organic Food Shop of New Zealand, among others. This is the voice from the bottom of the well saying thanks.