MODERN LANGUAGES

They say all good things must come to an end.
Today, myself & Mrs. Mac said goodbye to the Amstrad 464.
And if we're perfectly honest, we say 'Good riddance'.
There was nothing 'good' about this old word-processing behemoth, but it outlasted the Ford Cortina; and apart from Cursor-gate in 1992, it did the job we expected of it.
We tried contacting Amstrad with regard to the warranty they supplied us during that long hot Littlewoods Cup summer, but no-one answered the telephone.
I personally think that if Mr.Sugar has any designs on being the President of Europe, he'd better buck his bally ideas up and get himself an apprentice secretary or receptionist.
There was nothing for it.
If I were to continue with my quest to make Britain great again, I would have to visit Rumbelows and purchase a new mainframe.

Enter stage left - Jack. The eldest grandson, and recently ejected from our 'legacy pot' for a willful impersonation of that idiot Russell Brand.
There's no excuse for unruly hair, and the only men who should wear make-up are combat soldiers in camouflage.
(The less we say about the jewellery the better).
But it was Jack that had the Wellington College education and the criminal record for internet-trolling, so it was he that we turned to in our hour of need.
After deconstructing a series of grunts spewing from our landline, we were of the opinion that he thought we both needed tablets.
Mrs.Mac has a daily dose of forgiving HRT to stop her from soaking the bri-nylon sheets of a summer's evening, but I have never taken so much as an aspirin in my life so far, not even when Allotment Alan had a 'mixed bag of  Mitsubishi speckles' at the British Legion Christmas Party.
A tablet it transpires, is like a very large eye-phone.
Imagine an Etch-a-Sketch with no dials, but a touch-sensitive screen like the ones you find in a GP's waiting room.
Too big for your pocket, but too ruddy small for anyone with normal eyesight! ROLF.

Mrs.Mac had heard one of the cleaning ladies at the Con Club talking about kindling, huddling and Sir Jeremy Clarkson, and I thought she was off to blasted Glastonbury (again!) until she explained it was technically a digital library without any decent reference books, and a noticeable lack of date-stamps.
I told her that we must have one installed immediately, as the latest Len Deighton was in Waterstones, and I wasn't going to pay their latte'-drenched, beatnik, pinko, shop girls any more of my hard-earned civil service pension than was necessary.

It arrived last Thursday.
We are still unsure of how we switch it on, so Jack has become a regular feature in our lives, and Mrs.Mac thinks we should swap him for Sophie when it comes to disseminating the will.

This is what we have learned so far.
I have tried to detail it as much as possible, as I'm sure some of you will be in the heart of the digi-darkness.
The times are changing rather rapidly.
Thanks the heavens for Her Majesty.
And British manufactured weapons.

Assumed Computer Language
(Learnt not taught):

The little round chap with the sticky-out straight bit denotes the Off/On Switch.
Why it can't say 'On' in the Queen's ruddy English I do not know!?!?
It looks like what we used to call at school 'A Japanese Person's Eye'.

The lampshade on its side is not in fact anything to do with light.
It is sound.
Looking like a drunk space-rocket re-entry craft, the brackets denote whether it is increased volume you require (or the opposite).
The fact there are two brackets means 'more'.
One bracket means 'less'.
Why it can't say 'Up' or 'Down', once again in the lingua franca of this great British isle, I do not know?
The single cell Ever Ready battery is an indication of how much power the computer has.
PLEASE do not try & insert a single cell battery into the back of your computer! 
Mrs.Mac has 'unenabled' our ability to ever have an iTunes baby, even if we knew what one was.

The spanner is for people like Jack.
We are advised never to click on the spanner.
He also advises we ignore the circle with six cuboid dots in it.
He doesn't explain why?

The shield with a a heraldic harlequin print has absolutely nothing to do with the royal court, vexillology nor armourial bearings.
Jack has advised us not to click on this either.
We have put stickers on the TV screen.

The upside-down lampshade is also nothing to do with light.
Or sound.
It indicates whether or not we are getting a 'good package' from Great British Telecommunications?
Jack insisted we looked at some virgins.
I told him we were past those days.

The diagonal lampshade in the corner of an empty box has absolutely nothing to do with microwaves.
Supper was late.
Again.

We have yet to deal with the suitcase with the black triangle, the unlocked padlock, the big blue F, the big G, the clapperboard, the little white bird on a blue background, the little blue bird, the envelope, the satchel and what can only be described as a logo for the progressive alliance of those Bolshevik idiots in the Green Party, the Labour and the Libertine Demagogues.
Jack says it's something to do with Goggle, but I refuse to watch Channel 4.

There's absolutely no indication as how to access the typewriter, but some infuriating reason, every time I go to type, the screen fills with a cartoon keyboard.
Then it disappears again.

It's probably a design fault, but I see from the underside of the television screen that some of the parts were manufactured in the Far East.
There's just no morality anymore.

God save the Queen!
Bring Back the Galaxy Counters giraffe!
And ration-books.