Sunday lunch (Part 1)

We had a lovely roast dinner at my brother’s house today. I don’t know how his girlfriend manages to cook it all so well. Not only did she cook it beautifully, but she cooked it for eight people, and also managed to fit everyone round a table (using two tables), which was quite impressive given the space available.

It was good to see my brother, his girlfriend and my grandparents again, all of whom seem quite well. Grandma showed everyone her and grandad’s holiday snaps - this is a regular ritual at any family gathering. She has lined up several jobs for me to do while I’m here, including helping her put phone numbers into her mobile phone and trying to make the new video recorder record things. As I’ve only rarely used a video recorder myself this latter job could be a challenge. I tried to work out how to use her digital camera (which I think she got as a free gift from somewhere) today, because she couldn’t ‘play back’ the pictures and it kept going into video mode, but I couldn’t make it work.

It must be terribly frustrating to be an older person (or anyone, for that matter) to have to try and deal with new technology and feel really, really baffled by it. I imagine that my grandma and grandad probably feel a bit like I do when confronted with an equation or some other mathematical problem - it doesn’t have to be very complicated to completely flummox me. I just can’t begin to get my head round it, and from what she was saying today, this is how my grandma feels about such things as mobile phones and video recorders. I’m sure there are many older people who are perfectly at home with the latest technology, but my grandparents are not among them.

To be continued…