I love the internet! I am 81 and it has been around for less than half my life. I think it’s a surprise to many young people that some older people actually know their way round a lot of the internet, if not every bit.

I was teaching in the 1980s when schools started being given computers. In the primary school I worked at, we were given one for the entire 120 or so children in our building. I remember being unsure how I could let each of the 30 children ‘have a go’ when each classroom had it for an hour or two. Happily, I gave up teaching in that school and by the time I worked in secondary schools (a few years later) there were enough computers for a class and each class would have an hour or so once or twice a week.

Julian bought a PC way back in the ‘90s which was before the internet (at least for the majority of people) and we used it as a sort of typewriter which could be hooked up to a printer.

In about 1997 we opened our shop. We had a PC in our joint office. I’m not sure what Julian used it for but I was very involved with Spider Solitaire! I remember that when you turned the computer on and wanted to be on the internet, the computer took over the phone line and you heard beep-beep-beep-beep-beep etc then you could look at emails. But, you couldn’t take or make phone calls! That didn’t last for too long, I seem to remember.

I loved email from the first time I used it! I had always loved getting post but that didn’t happen every day. Suddenly I was getting and sending messages from friends and family – maybe 1 or 2 a day! That was so great!

Now, of course, we’ve had broadband and, even better, Wi-Fi, for ages. There will be some young people who won’t realise that there was no internet, no broadband, no Wi-Fi, at least for most mere mortals, until I was already quite old (in my 50’s) and I’m sure they will hardly be able to believe it!