I spend a lot of time using my iPad (a smaller and more personal computer.) I really cannot imagine my life without it! I look up recipes, search for the reason behind new aches and pains, keep in touch with relatives abroad and those friends of mine who have email. I also search for information about films and tv programmes I’ve watched – who played which part? (Ah, yes, I thought it was him! Wasn’t he handsome back then!) or for ‘Whatever happened to so and so?’

It seems amazing to me that I spent the first 55 or 60 years of my life with no internet, no email, and no way of looking up some information that wasn’t in the 1950’s version of the Encyclopedia Britannica Jr. which I still had. Yes, I could go down the road to the library, if it was during open hours but I might forget to bother by the time I got there!

Nowadays, many of my evenings at home are spent watching things on my iPad that I missed seeing when they were originally on tv or at the cinema. Just at the moment I am re-watching the 7 Up series. If you are not in Great Britain, you won’t have seen it. It started in 1964 when a tv company decided to see whether one could look at children at the age of 7 and ‘see’ what they would be like later on in life.

The programme followed 14 children and interviewed them at the age of 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 56 and 63. I had missed the most recent programmes and was quite keen to see what had happened to those people. I’ve watched the first 2 of the 3 in the series and will likely watch the third later this evening.

Without a computer, my life would be very different and I’m glad to say that I don’t know what it would look like!