M.M. George's Blog, page 3

Diced and Dished

The husband and I are playing games these days. Bored, you would think, in lockdown. Our very own special second lockdown. Thanks, Swansea!

Two nights ago, we rolled the dice. I got a five, the husband, two. ‘Your turn,’ I said, cocking my eyebrow at the rapidly growing mountain of dishes in the sink. In typical fashion, he said, ‘Just consider it done.’

I considered all night and well into the afternoon of the next day. Finally, when there no plates left to eat dinner off, we rolled the dice again. It was a new day after all. I got a one, he got a two again. The dishes got done.

There was a time in my misspent youth when I loved doing the dishes. In fact, I think one reason why the husband moved to London with such alacrity was that he was carrying a made-to-order dishwasher with him. What he hadn’t realised was the difference between doing the dishes a couple of times a month when the Jeeves didn’t report for work and doing them three times a day. Every day. For ten years. The fun had kind of worn out. As had the skin on my hands.

We began life in London with the dishes being done after every meal. It helped that our kitchen and living room were inextricably linked. Sit on the sofa and you could see the dishes in the sink. Not quite the high Indian standards we aspired to.

When we moved to Swansea, the dishes had to be done. Because the enchantingly picture-book fisherman’s cottage we were renting was charming a whole disco-load of slugs as well. Partying all night, too, if the silvery trails on the carpet were any indication. When I discovered two dead slugs in my flour, we moved. Into our own flat. Where I decided it was time to train the husband.

I set down rules. ‘One tea mug for me, one for you. For the whole day.’ We drink about six cups of tea in a day. Each. Twelve mugs. Now cut back to two. I was already feeling happier. The husband looked as if the tea cannister had jumped up and socked him one.

The next day I caught the husband slipping the plate he’d eaten his banana off into the sink. ‘Halt!’ I cried peremptorily. ‘You can use that plate again for lunch.’ The husband set his plate down obediently. But he looked sad. ‘You can throw the banana skin away,’ I consoled him.

Third rule. ‘I cook, you wash.’ This was more acceptable to the husband. Not so much to me. Simple fact: I use fewer dishes when I cook. We women are like that. Also, the husband was prone to pitching in while I cooked. Mostly uninvited. Mostly also unwelcome. Let’s just say pitching in was his party trick. In the event, who was going to wash the dishes? ‘I warmed up the rotis,’ he claimed in defence when shown the sink.

The rules were followed. The sink was only half full. Major plus. But used crockery festooned every available surface. Not so major a plus. Maybe it was time to rethink the rules. I’m magnanimous like that. Not too scared to admit I’m wrong. The husband might have another opinion on that.

That’s when we began rolling the dice. Just to up the competitive quotient, you know. I’ve already told you how that worked out. You see, the husband is a man. He has the typical male propensity for tunnel vision. The light at the end of it to be found on WhatsApp only.

The kitchen sink has swung back to full. Except when I throw the lower number.

Amma and the Porn Stars

It was Sunday. Time to call the parents. Amma was unusually lacklustre. Her voice had the kind of quaver that you might almost miss if your mind was on other things. Like how much my back was aching. And that there were still two more rows of that wretched granny square blanket to be seamed.

We’d done the Bigg Boss premiere. Moved on to how the electrician possibly had Covid. A side plunge took us to how the washing machine had behaved abominably, giving up the wash mid-cycle. And how Amma had had to rinse out the clothes that were in it. And how, as a result, her back was killing her. Backs, I tell you. Less to be trusted than an itinerant lockdown.

Somewhere in the middle of this, the husband shouted a cheery bye and retired to his man cave. Serendipitously that was also when I caught the almost-quaver in Amma’s voice.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked warily. For Amma is like Goldilocks. Everything’s either too much or too little. Usually the weather. Like these days, it was too cold in the evening and too hot during the day. What can I say? Apart from holding October responsible. Sadly, Amma was the Goldilocks who’d never found Little Bear.

‘I’m getting these strange Facebook friend requests.’ Amma’s voice hit mid-quaver with an injection of hysteria.

‘Don’t accept friend requests from anyone you don’t know,’ I interjected automatically. The interjection had been made several times in the last eight years since Amma popped up on FB, most forcefully by the son. It’s what you do when you have elderly parents wandering around in the cyber world on their own with only a touch screen for company. You want to keep them safe indoors, but you have to let them go. Live their cyber lives.

‘I know that much!’ came the indignant response. Pause. Long pause. I waited.

‘There’s this girl…’ The quaver had dropped several notes to a whisper. Even though the son-in-law was reassuringly out of auditory reach. ‘She’s sending me photos. Of her bum. And she’s only wearing a thong.’ I jerked up, ignoring the protest from my back. What did Amma know about thongs? More pertinently, where did she learn it from?

Another jerk. This time back to the phone call. ‘There are videos as well.’ The confession seemed to be complete.

‘Have you touched any of those photos by mistake?’

‘No, I promise I have not. Really. I don’t why this is happening to me.’ I could almost see the tears well up in Amma’s eyes. It was déjà vu for me, back to when the son was ten years old. Surely this was the generational curve the wrong way round.

‘Probably by mistake,’ I said graciously. I could have staked my life it was.

‘How do I get rid of them? Yesterday, the Jeeves was behind me when Sharmaji and his bai popped up on my screen.’ That was more than I could swallow womanfully, so we paused once again.

‘Why don’t you get G to check on what’s happened?’ G being the son’s friend who lives two houses down and was thus accessible even in lockdown.

‘Noooo! He’s just a child. How can I let him see pictures like these?’ Never mind that the said child is thirty-two years old. And teaches scuba diving in Hawaii in a Covid-free world. And has probably seen much worse than a thong.

The son, who’d grown up sharing Esquire magazine with Appa, did not share Amma’s qualms. The only problem is, the last time G rendered Amma electronic assistance, he deleted her entire Contacts list. I think I know what Goldilocks’ peeve is going to be, come next phone call.

Not Quite Born to Run

You can take the Indian out of India, but you can’t take India out of the Indian. I learnt that last week.

It was blazing heat outside. Summer showing us what we’d be missing in a few weeks. The natives outside my balcony had stripped down to the bare minimum. Some had gone further. I’d had to avert my gaze.

It was only I who dithered, one foot in the balcony, one inside the room, testing waters so to speak. Except that the waters were trickling down my back. ‘I can’t go out in that sun,’ the Indian in me moaned.

The husband actually looked up from his trolling. ‘You want to win that prize, don’t you?’

‘I don’t even know what the prize is.’ Moans and whinges, as has been stated before, only serve to get the husband’s back up. Even when he’s lolling on a sofa. Blinds firmly pulled to keep out the sun.

‘Go!’

And I went. To walk in the heat. Drag my Fitbit to the 10,000 steps that was my daily mandate. To meet the requirements of the Book Club. Where I’d proposed Born to Run as our next read. In the hope that I would finally be able to look the son in the eye at the next video call in early October and say, ‘There, I’ve read it.’

I have often found myself in life situations which beep Error 404 Not Found at me. No exit clause to be found. Password not recognised. Like the time I was taken to the maze at Hampton Court. And left there. That was where I found myself now. Without an exit clause, that is. And Error 404 beeping frantically at me.

For the organiser of our Zoom Book Club had taken to my book suggestion enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, I might say. And, in a bizarre turn, proposed a competition to see which of us readers could notch up the most exercise time/miles in the month before we discussed the book. I mean, what turned that bookworm?

Minus abovementioned exit clause, I decided to give it a go. Treat it like a kickstart to the exercise regimen I’d been promising the husband since February.

‘Read that book!’ said the son. Yet again. ‘And start running!’ I was (almost!) getting used to this game. Feint, parry, thrust. Begin again.

‘I’m not Mexican,’ I told him. Yes, I had read the first ten pages.

Which is why I found myself outside on the hot pavement that day. If not run, then walk. Which I did doggedly for the next five days. Then flopped onto the sofa the minute the husband went to raise his bodily chocolate index. This was so not happening. Not least because one member of the Book Club was walking and cycling more miles in a day than I would care to do in a car.

The organiser must have read the heat waves emanating from my brain. She announced a special prize for me for suggesting the book that had got us – or at least those of us who were not sweltering in India – off our couches. It didn’t matter that she still made no mention of what the prizes were. It was like balm to my soul, well, an ice pack to my sore muscles.

It might be time to cast on a scarf for her. And, oh yes, read Born to Run. I have to now, don’t I? October is here. Next, we’ll worry about the running.

The True Test of Maternal Love

‘You’re bursting out of those jeans,’ came the husband’s opening gambit. ‘Have you…’ Weighed yourself recently? wafted in the air, but I batted it away, pretending to be immersed in the weather forecast for the day. We were going out for ice cream. There could not have been a more inappropriate question.

Two days later, the son graced us with a video call. This usually happens: (1) on a special occasion like a birthday (ours) or an anniversary (ours); (2) when he wants to show us how long his hair has grown in lockdown; and, very rarely, (3) when he’s had the time to feel lonely. This time, I think, it was all of the above.

Somewhere in between father and son setting the world to rights and sorting out Amma’s bank problems, the son turned to me with a quizzical look, ‘Have you put on weight?’ ‘See, see,’ crowed the husband. ‘When I told her…’ his enthusiasm went voluntarily into self-isolation in the heat of my furious glare.

I was already sulking with Miranda. Another sulk was out of the question. It’s very difficult to keep two sulks going. I keep forgetting which sulk I’m sulking.

So, instead, I went and stood before the mirror. Not my favourite place, I admit. I can go for days without acknowledging its presence. And rightly so. I did not like what it was showing me now. The mirror was not my friend.

A sucker for punishment, that’s what I am, I tell you. For I moved next to the weighing scale. Which scoffed outright at my fervently whispered prayer as I got on it. I squinted at the read-out. And saw that the one Covid stone (of weight) I’d been ‘allowed’ to put on during lockdown had gathered friends along the way. I was ready for the fifth wave when the entire world except India was preparing for the second.

Late that night, my email pinged. It was from the son. And contained a book. Called Born To Run. About the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico. Who were apparently just that – born to run.

‘Is the boy mad?’ I shrieked. ‘I can’t run. My knees won’t take it.’

‘You can try,’ said the said boy two days later in another late-night phone call. I mean I feel privileged that we’re his midnight buddies, but it does kind of ruin the next day for me.

‘As a first step, why don’t you just read that book?’ came his calm voice over the flood of my noisy recriminations.

Let it be placed on record here that I have never ever read a non-fiction book in my life. You can’t count Nancy Reagan’s memoirs, which were as good a piece of fiction as any other. But this was the son. My only progeny. I downloaded the book onto my phone in a gesture of maternal love and goodwill.

The intention was to read it during pit stops on my walks. Good, honest intentions, I swear. Except that Miranda came into my life. And walks walked out. What was I to do?

Well, you’ll have to wait till next week to find out, won’t you?

 

 

 

The Full On Biking Experience

Miranda and I are not on speaking terms at the moment. Oh, Miranda’s the new bike. Note, I’m not saying ‘my’ new bike. That’s because I’m sulking and very seriously considering reading her her rights. See what I did there? Well, on to the rights.

There are only so many times you, Miranda, can cuff my shin. You can’t tell me your bell’s already shattered and your pretty little basket’s already unravelling around the rim. And, no, you can’t kick back with your pedals. Nor can you point your handle-bars at me. I’m a learner, I’ve put ‘L’ plates on you for just that reason. I will fall, I will dive into hedges. You’re the one who’s got to keep your head. And aren’t you lucky it wasn’t a blackberry bramble we did that pirouette into? What would your paintwork have said to that, huh?

Actually who I would like to rant against is the husband. I’m just taking it out on Miranda. The husband is clearly more ambitious than I am. The trainer at BikeAbility made the mistake of telling him, ‘There’s nothing more I can teach her.’ The husband, it seems, believed her.

While I’m moaning and groaning through the night with the various muscles I’ve newly learnt I possess, the husband has been dreaming of shady riverside cycling paths and tranquil two-wheeled togetherness.

Reality proved markedly different yesterday. The rocky start that had me almost dive into a man with a cart on the pavement ensured I had to walk Miranda to the aforementioned shady riverside path. The husband was not happy but resolutely maintained his ‘mine is not to question why’ look.

The look was wearing thin by the time Miranda and I walked down a particularly steep slope and then tried to clamber up an incline. And failed equally resolutely. ‘Not to question why’ had become a very British ‘tad cross’ by then.

A bit of background here. Swansea had ushered in an Indian summer as of Saturday. All this walking and clambering was being accompanied by sweat and tears. Only the blood was missing. Miranda noticed that, so she swung her left pedal into my right shin. All present and accounted for now, thank you.

The shady path was proving not so shady. Only the river remained constant. But there’s this thing about rivers. They undulate. And they have banks they have not quite managed to smooth into the perfect cycle path.

The ‘L’ plates were having quite the opposite effect to that intended. My fellow cyclists seemed dangerously mesmerised by them. Miranda’s bell had given up the ghost frantically trying to signal to them to keep out of my way.

And, I’d pulled a muscle in my left leg, the throb of which was now seeping into my foot. Did you know muscles stretch all down the leg, and what starts at one point eventually makes its way to the rest? That was my lesson of the day. Also the ruin of it.

For by now, the husband had moved from ‘tad cross’, stretched across ‘irritated’, and moved onto ‘just get on and pedal, will you?’. Lips set tightly, he even set me rolling again. Sorry, pedalling.

Till we hit the next incline.

I reached for the nearest tree. Plopped myself down in its shade. ‘You go on,’ I panted, reaching for the pain spray. ‘I’ll wait here.’

There was no argument, an index of all that the husband was bottling inside. We’d crossed British borders and got into the region of Delhi-after-two-Patiala-pegs road rage.

I have nothing to report on the ride back home. I survived. As you can see, if you’ve read this tale.

Rear Seat

Caution: This post is not for the squeamish.

I was in urgent need of a doughnut cushion. I looked dubiously at the husband, then whisked the thought away. The husband is a man. More likely to return with a twelve-pack of Krispy Kreme Chocolate Firecrackers. I certainly didn’t need more fire anywhere near me.

For certain delicate parts of me were on fire. Sitting was well nigh impossible. The last time this had happened to me, I’d had an episiotomy—and a baby to boost my credentials. The reward for all that pain. At least that’s what the Mothers said. I might have had different views on the subject. Especially as it was the Dark Ages. When doughnut cushions did not exist.

Since then, the baby had grown up. The maternal glint had been transferred. To the new bike in my life. And I had ridden it. More than I should have, perhaps. At least that’s what my nether regions were trying to project. I begged to differ. I thought it was the seat. Too new and hard for hitherto well-protected parts of me.

We took the bike back to the shop. Then ensued what were perhaps the most embarrassing moments of my life. Unless you count the time when I got into a ‘difference of opinion’ with a perfect stranger in a restaurant over the poverty porn potential of Slumdog Millionaire. On second thoughts, that was probably more embarrassing for the husband than me.

But back to the bike shop. Where we were trying to explain the doughnut problem to one store manager and one salesgirl who were already spluttering into their handkerchiefs. ‘Sorry, something in my throat,’ said the manager, mopping at his eyes. ‘So where exactly…?’

The husband chose that precise moment to point to a completely different part of me.

‘Have you tried cycling tights?’ chirped the salesgirl. ‘They are…well…padded for just that eventuality.’ I had.

‘Have you tried chamois cream on the saddle?’ This was the manager’s contribution. I hadn’t. And they hadn’t any in stock. So that was a dead end.

‘You do know you shouldn’t wear anything under your cycling tights?’ It was the salesgirl’s turn again. No, I didn’t. But the problem was elsewhere, wasn’t it? At that moment, I could have happily wrung the husband’s neck.

Instead, I took a deep breath and decided to bite the bullet, Desperate situations call for desperate measures. I’d spent a mini fortune on that bike. I was not going to let it get the upper hand.

‘It’s my a***,’ I said finally. Strange noises emanated from the store manager and the salesgirl. I tried not to look. The customer is always right, I know. But, sometimes, the customer can split right down the middle. As I had.

This new insight initiated another round of examination and technical patter between the manager and the husband. I faded out. I’d hardly slept the night before. And I’d done my bit here.

Finally it was decided that if the seat was nosed down a bit, things might look up. For me.

I did learn a new thing though. You don’t wear underwear under cycling tights. Well, what do you know? Who’d have thought it?

The Great Bike Hunt of 2020

The husband and I were hanging on to the door of the caretaker’s office, one foot in, the other out. ‘You have what?’

‘I have two spaces but sign up quickly. Or I’ll have to give them to someone else.’ Our caretaker is round. Every bit of him. And as genial as that implies. Right now, his smile was creasing into a moon rising from the folds of his face. A moon promising us the earth. Two spaces in the bike shed of our apartment block. It was unbelievable. We’d been told there was a queue a mile long.

But to claim the bike spaces, we needed bikes. Double quick. Thus began the Great Bike Hunt of 2020. No bikes to be had for love or money. Stores empty, websites with big red ‘Sold Out’ signs glaring at us. Thank you, Covid-19! Thank you for the greatly reduced public transport. For the restless kids and the parents who have to amuse them. For the gym enthusiasts who have had to seek alternative means of exercise.

All of it boiled down to us now treading the pavements in search of two bikes. One for the husband, eye firmly on the day when I could ride to a line. Visions of companiable rides together in the moors of Gower. You get my drift.

And one for me. I was particularly in want of a fortuitous confluence of the stars here. For I needed a step-through, the old muscles rearing in alarm at putting themselves over a crossbar. To be honest, I don’t think I could have managed that particular feat even at twenty-four, but never mind that. No help that step-throughs were currently at the crossover of ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘hipster’. Read rare as gold.

I also needed a bike that was just about tall enough for a British twelve-year-old, but with the heart of a JCB, strong enough to carry all of me. Well, miracles have been known to happen. But my optimism was wearing down by the day. The miracle fountain might just have run dry around the time I found I could keep myself up on two wheels and even achieve a turn.

At the end of my next bicycling lesson, I poured out my woes to the trainer. Luckily the husband was in the car waiting for me. He does not approve of the pouring out of woes. Yet one more marital lesson I’ve learnt.

The trainer whipped out her phone. ‘I was at this store yesterday…’ she said, showing me a picture of what looked like the perfect bike. Mary Poppins re-avatared with twenty-first century graphics.

I raced back to the car. Well, as much as was possible. ‘Quick, quick,’ I cried, jumping in. The husband looked mildly alarmed. But he’s used to me. So, he merely revved the car.

Well, I got the bike. The last one in the store. And grabbed the space in the bike shed. Miracles do happen. Maybe that fountain got replenished. I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

Whinge and Moan

For thirteen weeks now, I’ve made you all laugh. Not this week. This week, I’m going to whinge. And moan. So you can grin and bear it. Or you can grin at my moans.

For it’s been one of those weeks. When nothing has gone the way I wanted. Hanging, ‘latko’-ing. That’s how I feel.

First on, Swansea is blustering like a cretinous bully who doesn’t notice the teacher’s in the classroom. It’s gales and rain all around. Not even a nod to the fact that it is August. Summer, remember? So, after all that crowing last week about bicycle training, I’ve had to cancel, cancel. And then cancel again. I don’t trust my already precarious balance in winds of 65 miles per hour.

Besides, I’ve got a cold from my last bicycle outing. Which meant I had to say no to the crochet club meet in the pub where they do the most amazing caramel apple pie.

Don’t tune out, there’s more coming.

Have you ever been in that vortex between books? When you’ve let go of one and are hanging, fingers crooked, ready to hook the next one? See, hanging again? But there’s no next one. Not since I finished my book club book a week earlier than scheduled. Three books have been tossed aside thus far. One on the War of the Roses. Another on Ravana. Cosmic connection?

I’ve cast off my seventh scarf and cast on my sixth cap. But the thought of seed stitch for eight inches is daunting. My needles are hanging out of my basket. I’m resolutely ignoring them. And I need a new project for when I want to hurl the cap out of the window. Into that gale.

Meanwhile, a single sock is still draped on the arm of the sofa. I have to knit its pair. The husband wiggles his left foot at it meaningfully roughly at the rate of once an hour. The other option, of course, is that I could cut off his left foot.

I’m in the last one-third of my third run of Zindagi Gulzar Hai. The part where Fawad Khan is making chocolate eyes at his bride. I had to turn off Netflix. I couldn’t take any more. The green-eyed monster was running me out of karma points by the second. At this rate, even a dog’s life would be upcycling.

To top it all, the husband is technically on a week’s leave. But a project has ‘appeared’. Which means he’s holed up in his man cave.

On the other hand, for the first time in almost a year, I’ve got no ‘work’ work. The article I had been saving up for just such an emergency got moved up the publication list, so I had to put my back into it.

I should have known this would happen when I married my opposite number on the zodiac wheel. Listened to Linda Aunty. That’s Mrs Goodman for the rest of you. She slept under my pillow when I was a teenager. And told me not to do what I did. That I would be working my eyes out while the husband strummed his guitar. And that I would be mooching around while he melded into his laptop.

I was sitting thusly mooching when the son called. ‘What’re you doing, Ma?’ he asked to the background clatter of his cooking utensils. The son doesn’t believe in wasting time, so he talks to us as he cooks, does the dishes, cleans his room, picks his scabs.

‘I’m formatting the articles for the next journal issue.’

‘Deadline?’

‘No,’ I muttered. ‘For April 2021.’

Loud cackles crossed paths with the clatter on the other side of the line. ‘Seriously, Ma? You do realise we’re only in August?’

Out poured all my angst. I’ll say this for the son, he’s a good listener. Even if the listening is punctuated with ‘Achha, two cloves of garlic or four?’

‘Wow!’ he said brightly at the end of the deluge. ‘That’s an impressive list even for you.’

Short silence. ‘You know what, Ma? Why don’t you make hash browns?’

Long silence. Did I really hear that right?

‘You can indulge all your talents at one go. You can even shape them like a mandala.’

There are times when a mother has to keep quiet. Not ask questions. Let hang.

Emma Jane

‘You have to push, push, push – like this – and then pedal, pedal, pedal – as fast as you can.’ The instructions came from somewhere near my knee. Considering the challenges I myself face vertically, it’s quite a feat for someone to be that small.

I looked down. And found Emma Jane. Who was all of three. And now teaching me how to ride a bicycle. From the vantage point of her tricycle.

Bicycles and I share a rather unhappy history. When I was middle-teenaged, Appa decided it was time I learnt to ride a bike. While I would rather get on with whatever book I was currently reading. Dipping banana chips into avakkai pickle as an accompaniment.

Appa then proceeded to make the only judgemental error I’ve ever known him to make. He got me a bicycle that was just that little bit too big. In the confident hope that I would grow into it. Little realising that books and chips do not make a girl grow. Not vertically at least. A rather painful encounter with a thorn hedge and the bicycle disappeared into the depths of the store-room.

Forty years later and middle-aged, the chips and pickle had settled comfortably to a lifetime’s companionship with my midriff. I was tired of walking wherever I needed to go. Begging lifts from the husband when I needed to go where my legs would not take me.

‘Why don’t you learn to ride a bike?’ said the son when I was bundling my woes on his shoulder. He was not taking into account several facts. I have two left feet. I cannot even clap my hands in time to music. I cannot dance. I cannot swim despite six months of lessons. I was petrified of anything with just two wheels. The thorn hedge still flashes back to me in nightmares.

But the idea took root in my head and transplanted itself on my bucket list. A list that has been empty since I learnt how to crochet.

Two years later, Covid-19 struck. And the husband had a week off. And I found BikeAbility Wales. And Emma Jane. Serendipitous all round.

I did three horrible days of push-push-push, balance-turn-balance, push-push-push. Every muscle God put into me woke up screeching. A whole tube of diclofenac cream was consumed, as was a whole pack of ibuprofen.

I was on the verge of giving up all over again when it all clicked into place. Suddenly I found I was staying up on two wheels. Well, for two rounds of the practice track. And managing turns. The right-handed ones at least.

I had just finished the third of my two rounds and ground to an abrupt, panting halt when Emma Jane surfaced in my life.

Lolling back in her tricycle, she began conversationally, ‘When I was really little…’ I pulled down my eyebrow just in time. How much littler…? ‘I fell down,’ she continued, smoothing her little striped frock. ‘And there was a lot of blood. But I didn’t cry.’

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘practise a little more. You can do it.’ Much to the amusement of her Nan and my trainer.

I dutifully clambered back onto the bike and did another two rounds. Emma Jane clapped her hands in enthusiastic approval.

‘Well done!’ she cried. ‘You’re doing really well!’

Emma Jane, where were you when I was fifteen?

I Picked Up the Tech Gauntlet

Two weeks ago, a friend called up in tears. She’d upgraded to a smartphone and it was treating her rudely. She couldn’t text any more. Predictive text was creating havoc in her life. She’d just sent a very rude message to her supervisor by mistake. She didn’t know if she still had a job, etc., etc., etc.

We held an emergency meeting up on Kilvey Hill. Lockdown was still on. It was either up there where there was no one else or on the beach where we’d be hard put to take two steps without bumping into someone. Social distancing – what was that?

Smugness alert! I helpfully downloaded Aldiko on her phone. Downloaded books on it. Put it down to my very organic instinct to reach for a book when I’m in trouble. ‘There now you have an e-book reader!’

‘But what about my texts?’

Yes, that too. So we downloaded the Google keyboard. And I taught her to swipe. I learnt all over again how a mobile phone had grown backwards since we first met. You can take fancy pictures on it, read books and emails, find your soulmate, watch porn. But ask it to make a call or just send a text, and it throws up its arms in despair. As if you were trying to collar it back to the Jurassic Age.

I remember the time when, as a family, we’d sit around the dining table, watching the son gobble dinner with his right hand and text on his Blackberry with his left. Under the table cover. While we forgot to eat watching him.

On the hill, the friend was still trying to come to terms with the nightmare she’d bought on Amazon. And ‘marvellous’ was still showing up as ‘narcolepsy’.

Two hours later, I was tired. ‘You need to practise,’ I said picking up my bag. ‘Loads.’

Comeuppance was round the corner. Two days later, the new Fitbit arrived. Yes, the one that was supposed to have been the husband’s birthday present in August and became mine.

It was the Fitbit’s fault. Not mine. Let me stress that at the outset. Maybe it was because I was born under Aquarius, but tech and I had had an extended honeymoon lasting many years. Till circa 2008. When it made a final spurt to get over me. And did. I still love tech. But it’s an unrequited love affair now.

So there I was, firing every neuron I had to set up the Charge 4. Which was baulking like a newly bridled filly. Over the course of the next six hours, I learnt many lessons. That the Fitbit software takes fifteen minutes to recover from each set-up attempt. That it is prone to sulks. Updates – one for the Fitbit app and two for the Fitbit itself – were needed before it could be induced to stop sulking. Sometimes it had to be connected to the charger, at other times not. In retrospect, it might have been easier to bring a filly to bridle.

The husband and I belong to different schools of thought. In times of such crisis, he will turn to Google, I will turn to the manufacturer.

I tried the Fitbit chat room. I was 33rd on the list. But that list moved real quick. That should have set off the blues and twos. When my turn came, I was told I would have a minute to explain my problem. But Juan left in roughly thirty seconds to move to No. 34. And I am a quick typer.

Meanwhile, the husband was checking Google. And discovering that hundreds of wannabe Charge 4 wearers all over the world had similar problems. ‘You should have got that smart watch,’ he said. Sounding irritatingly smug. It was a familiar place to be.

Stung, I tried emailing Fitbit. The reply came when I was finally wearing the Fitbit on my wrist and peering anxiously to see whether it had retained the 9,000 or so steps I’d achieved that day. It had. But then so had the husband’s Fitbit. Without him putting a foot out of the flat. Well, it was his birthday present, wasn’t it?