We bought our first home computer at Christmas 1998.
It was meant for the children’s schoolwork. This was the reason written down before the purchase. Claire was twelve, Michael nine and both had begun bringing home work that was apparently improved by typing.
The computer occupied one end of the dining room. It had a separate monitor, tower, keyboard, mouse and printer. Each part needed a cable. Alan laid them out on the table and read the instructions before connecting anything.
Michael asked whether he could switch it on.
‘When it’s ready.’
‘When will it be ready?’
‘After you stop asking.’
Claire had used computers at school. This gave her authority for the first afternoon. She showed us how to open a word-processing program and save a file. Michael discovered the games sooner than the rest of us discovered where the saved file had gone.
There was no internet connection. That came in 2001. In 1998, the computer was mainly a typewriter with memory, a games machine and a reason for the children to argue about whose turn had started first.
I used it for letters and school work. The first letter I typed took longer than it would have taken on my old portable typewriter because I changed the font, moved the margins and printed three versions. The final wording was nearly identical to the first.
At Eastbrook, most records were still on paper. The home computer felt ahead of my working day, though I did not yet know what use that would be.
Alan kept a notebook beside it with instructions for starting, shutting down and printing. Nobody followed the instructions in order except Alan.
The dining table still had enough room for four people if the keyboard was pushed back and the printer paper moved. At Christmas dinner, we covered the equipment and used the other end.
By January, each of us referred to it as ‘the computer’ when somebody else was using it and ‘my work’ when asking them to move.