Sunday 13 March 2016

Getting the ancient on line!

It has taken a flurry of emails last night and very early this morning to get the hymns sorted out for today. Weird but true....so I am really appreciating the immediacy of email!
To lie in bed tapping out a message to colleagues which are instantly received and replied to is simply wonderful...
One of my friends who is deaf and is unable to use the phone relies on the internet completely now in her old age.
Another friend not yet introduced to this wonderful means of communication has finally declared that it's time he learned to use it!
Getting all the paraphernalia together , explaining to the uninitiated about service providers etc makes it sound very complicated when it really is not!
Shopping on line is for me a life line. I get books, films, shoes and clothes as well as groceries...I have even booked my various cruises etc on line....it is much too easy!
The essentials of rural life are all delivered to my isolated door! The friend who stayed for a few days last week saw how easy it all was and finally converted to it in thought sooner than deed!
Getting an iPad is easy. Installing a router might prove a step too far...but I am happy to try to give it a go because it does make life much easier...so perseverance is worth it .
The old are not in any way dim. People see a person with weak legs, dimmed eyesight or hearing and mentally assess them as past it!
In some cases that could be true but most of us have learned to fight back.
I blog for instance.. Using the resources open to me now seems simple common sense so now, I am also a sort of missionary to those who are internet deprived. If I can do this...it can't be terribly hard.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

5 comments:

Pat C said...

I volunteer to teach Silver surfers - we have fun together. Their eyes light up when the manage to send their first email .... Pat Cox

Revjeanrolt said...

I could do with you over here Pat....for many it's a life line!

UKViewer said...

I agree. Even my SD at the age of 78 succumbed to an ipad bought by his children, who put the necessary infrastructure package in place, including broad band, wifi and wifi printer. Suddenly, the letter writing SD is now a quite verbose emailer, user of amazon and organizing his life around it - it demonstrates that you're never to old. And he can now punctuate and layout documents better than I can, with 30 years experience.

PixieMum said...

Joan, aged nearly 92 attends the church across the road from the Home where she has lived for the last 12 years. A few Sundays ago, Ian was asked to push her wheelchair, I went along too.

She knew the door codes, plus had keys on her lanyard, we had to take her to her second floor room, first thing we spotted in her room was her printer, laptop and iPad, in a much better case than mine too!

Ian was told where to store her chair, she manages with sticks indoors.
Joan has written her biography, lived in Richmond all her life, worked for Lloyds Bank including commuting to central London during the blitz.

She still knits, quote ' just squares these days', corresponds by email, also travels to Scotland with a carer to see family.

In the better weather, usually after Easter she tries to go to her Richmond church as it is not so high!

I assume the home has wifi, otherwise even more impressed that Joan has sorted out her own internet connection.

Yet we know of two family members, younger than us who declare they have no need of the Internet, don't need or want a computer. I do wonder how they manage to run their households, but of course we don't understand!

UKViewer said...

Even my spouse who hates computers has to use them at work and is surprisingly good with them. When we were working together, she used to operate a complicated Unix based HR system with aplomb, bringing her extensive knowledge of manual systems and procedures to the computerised system to do the same thing.

Her competence on a keyboard far exceeds my own, she is a former teleprinter operator, who can still read the punched tape that it used to produce. I've seen her transcribe words from the series of holes punched into the tape - an obsolete skill perhaps but worthwhile. And don't get her started about Morse code. She will da. da, dit to totally confuse me. :)