Brave new world

The other day I decided to list the things I now do on my computer, Kindle or mobile phone which earlier took infinitely more time and were carried out on a raft of other “platforms” like book reading, shop visiting, going to the bank and so forth.

Take looking up directions to get you from one place to another. In the Olden Days you used a street directory. In NSW it was published by a company called Gregory so the directory was called the Gregory’s much in the way the brand name Hoover became the generic name for a vacuum cleaner and Biro, the name of its inventor, the name for a ball-point pen. You looked up a street and suburb name in the extremely small type of the index. You were then referred to a map number with co-ordinates like D7 or K2 to enable you to find what you’re looking for. It was perfectly useful, except when you had to go from one side of Sydney to the other. That required moving from one map to another and could drive you crazy. Now of course we use Google Maps or its equivalent, type in the address and some omniscient female being tells you your travel plan step by step. I do, however, find it a bit spooky when she tells you to move into a specific lane, as if she is really watching you.

I can watch TV or a movie on my computer as well as the television. The fact that you can watch old movies or TV series as well as current offerings is great.

I use my Kindle to read books. Admittedly it means I am less likely to visit the library or the local bookshop, but as I am an omnivorous reader, it is certainly cheaper to buy my books on my device. I also use my Kindle to play Solitaire. When I remember playing Solitaire – or Patience as we called it – with a deck of cards, I also remember the tedium of shuffling and laying out the cards each time you started a new game.

Some research is brilliant on computer. For example, I wanted to be reminded of the variable charges imposed to cross the Harbour Bridge in the days before automatic tolls. I typed my question into the computer and immediately got the answer. I hate to think how long it would have taken me in a library to find the information.

I now order our basic groceries on computer. This is a huge advance on wandering the supermarket aisles with a trolley then having to bag everything after you paid for it, stow it in the car then carry all the bags into the house.

Covid has taught me that you can buy many other things online. Craft, for instance, like knitting wools or embroidery kits or even patchwork kits. Then there is dress and shoe shopping. To my amazement, it is quite possible to outfit myself from top to toe by ordering online. It is also quite possible to spend far too much money outfitting oneself online!

I now use my computer to check my bank account and pay bills, both activities which used to take too much time. You had to wait for your account details which were send to you on paper each month. Bills were often paid with a cheque and sent through the post. I can’t remember the last time I saw a cheque book and I don’t even know the current cost of a stamp. Of course to deposit or withdraw money meant a long queue at the bank, particularly annoying when you had to do this in your lunch hour. ATMs are surely a blessing.

Computers, ipads and mobile phones all make it possible to communicate with anyone instantly. In the Olden Days we had telephones with a rotary dial (I rather think a sophisticated version of the telephone had press buttons). Calls to someone overseas were not reliable as at least half the time was spent yelling “can you hear me”! We also had telegrams, short messages paid by the word and delivered to your home by your “postie”.

The idea that telephones could one day be mobile was presaged by two characters from popular culture: Dick Tracy, a detective who had a wrist phone and Maxwell Smart the ditsy spy who had a phone in his shoe.

The ease of communication today is really breathtaking. I can ring anyone, anywhere and send email messages across the world. We probably don’t need to be so connected but I think the good outweighs the bad in this case.

And, of course, computers allow me to send you, my dear readers, my weekly blog!

And now to what seems to be my weekly offering of interesting phrases. My first offering is calling someone a “smart alec”. Who was Alec and why was he smart?

How about your neighbour’s grandson being “the apple of his eye”. Try as I might, I can’t think of an explanation for this.

My mother would occasionally give us “a cat’s lick and a promise” which meant not giving us a bath but wiping us down with a wet flannel (English Olden Speak for face washer). I suppose it has something to do with the way cats clean themselves by licking their fur but it’s an engaging idea.

“Dragging the chain” is a perfectly understandable phrase, but why was it a chain. It could have been dragging a truck or dragging a dead donkey.

There’s the phrase “on a wing and a prayer”. Again, it’s perfectly understandable and probably dates from the early days of aviation, but why did it enter the language and become quite ubiquitous.

And finally, a phrase I used recently and then noted down: “Done like a dinner!” Again perfectly understandable but why a dinner?

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

US writer Logan Pearsall Smith: “A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.”