I’m a big fan of modern tech. I was late to this game way back when computers came into the graphic design field thinking like decimalisation that it would never ‘catch on’ and we’d soon be back to pounds, shillings and pence. I carried on drawing in the old way, on paper. I still do, but have caught up with tech as best I can.

My approach to it was to ‘never get cross with it’, that way it would never get me ranting on about how dreadful it is ( and it isn’t) and what a time swallower it is ( and it is ). I’d not be writing this on here if I’d not taken the trouble to get a grip on it I suppose.

I find it, in the main, a joy to work with and to use, but spend too much time looking at a screen when I could be gardening. It has transformed design and illustration and allowed people all over the world to see what I do, they don’t of course, but they can do if they like. Someone in China once looked at this site, just the one I suspect, others look and read here quite a lot! They know who they are and big thanks to them, makes my day when I look at the stats and another country person pops up whose dropped into my site for no particular reason and found some old dab in the UK wittering away about almost anything.

I’m not beyond getting a tad frustrated with tech, and a recent purchase took me to the edge. A present for someone it was supposed to make life easier and interesting. Fresh out of the package we followed all the instructions carefully, I’ve even taken the precaution these days of reading and watching on you tube, helpful little videos on how to set stuff up, rather than my former male thing of trying it out first and reading instructions later.

We’d done the watching of several you tube videos, gone through various uploadings and down loadings and pressed various buttons and bells, and all to no avail. I’d done that ‘ Let me have look at it’ patronising thing where I think I know I can solve this. I could not. There is now a small indentation on the desk in front of me where I have repeatedly bashed my head in frustration and annoyance. I’ve broken all my old rules about not getting mad at this tiny bit of tech. The game is up, it’s going back. The only thing that worked was resetting it to factory settings, after that the beast would not speak to anyone at all.

So I took it back to the shop. Not for technical support, I’d given up on it. This alone took an additional hour or moreof my life that I won’t get back. The Scottish tech support man that eventually took it back from me had a beard with a pony tail on the end. Very strange, I suppose he can clip it up somewhere when he’s having soup. He advised me to buy something that would cost five times as much but would at least work. I got my money back but won’t get back all that wasted time.

Now we’re thinking that perhaps we don’t need something that measures your body, if it had worked my blood pressure would have given a mighty high reading.

Sod it! A bit of relaxing gardening is called for.