4 September 2024

A new laptop has enhanced my life

The days of needing a baseball cap to write this column are finally over.

Illustration by Miguel Manich / Ikon Images

I have a new laptop. This might not look like an interesting opening but I assure you that for me it is life-changing. Remember those adverts for, um, sanitary products which promised a life of confidence and activity to the point where the customer might be forgiven for thinking that a whole new world of hitherto unexpected talents – hang-gliding, water-skiing, tennis-playing and whatnot – was hers for the taking if she bought them? This is a bit how I feel about my new – well, reconditioned – laptop. Except I’m not doing any of those things. In fact, now I’m mostly staying in bed. But, wow, it’s a whole new world of staying in bed.

The old laptop was, by the time it decided to give up the ghost, no longer a laptop, not really. It stayed on my desk, too ill and scared to move. A large part of fixing previous laptops of mine has involved a surprising amount of physical intervention: wedging matchsticks in the power input, sharp raps with the knuckles on various parts of the casing, depending on which machine was involved, or, paradoxically, extreme delicacy when opening and closing the lid, or moving the device around. This became the case with my last one; for the last three years of its life, I feared that that particular operation would make its hinges split like a wet Kleenex, so it became in effect a slim desktop. I didn’t even dare take it to bed. Its wobbly screen was propped up against a Bible given to me by my friend N—, although not initially for that purpose.

Typing on bright days became problematic, as my desk faces south so I can look at the sea. So I bought a cheap baseball cap from Primark which I pulled down over my eyes so I could see the screen properly. I know this column does not read as though it has often been written by someone wearing a baseball cap, but there it is. (My favourite cap, a faux-distressed affair with the cartoon characters Lilo and Stitch on the front, blew off in a storm when I took it out for a walk. I am still sad about that.)

Switching the machine on had become a dicey affair. Half the time the cursor would fail to appear. This was something of a problem, and I’d have to force-restart it. Sometimes nothing at all would happen unless I lifted the machine an inch or so off the desk and then dropped it. Then the space bar went. In the end, I simply didn’t bother with trying to fix it back on and just pressed the little dot underneath the key. Then the backspace key went, and boy do I use that a lot, so I went and plugged in a spare keyboard I bought for a tenner from the computer shop down the road. Like the best computer shops, it is a shabby mess that looks like it had been selling USB cables since 1830. Honestly, you have no idea how I suffered each week to bring you these words.

Now I can do anything with impunity. Switch it on, use the backspace key, open and close the lid, the lot. And, crucially, I can move it around. No longer do I have to protect my eyes from the glare of the sun with a Lilo and Stitch baseball cap. Which means staying in bed the whole time now. I am, essentially, an invalid.

Yesterday I had to go to the Post Office to send a parcel. I managed that because it was a favour for a friend. I noticed that my cool pair of specs was getting a bit wobbly in the arms so I thought I’d also nip into Vision Express to get them tightened up. I remembered to do the thing for someone else but forgot to do the thing for me. I toyed with the idea of going back but then thought, “Why bother?” Waitrose is currently having one of their deals where you get 25 per cent off your wine if you buy six bottles at once. This means that I don’t have to visit them for at least three days, four if I limit my intake. I went out last Friday to my friend Rosy’s birthday party, but it was touch and go whether I’d make it at all. As it turned out I had a grand time and a couple of drunken revellers complimented me on my ensemble on the walk back home, but that was that and I don’t see myself going anywhere for the next few weeks.

I suppose the whole staying-in-bed thing – it’s been a leitmotif, over the years. What new can I bring to the situation? Perhaps I could try not staying in bed. Try to get out more while the weather holds. I have vague plans to get on a bus and then tramp over the South Downs or Beachy Head – and indeed I did go to Lewes the other day simply because I had work to avoid and it was a sunny afternoon. I had been wanting to go to the Lewes Arms again ever since I first went there in 2006 or something and decided it was my favourite pub on Earth. So I went again and, while it was still lovely, it was very little like I remembered it, and also I began to realise that I would have had a much nicer time if I’d been with Someone. The same applies to walks by the cliffs or on the Downs. What’s the point of doing these things on your own? Come to think of it, what’s the point of staying in bed on your own? Well, actually, it’s great.