THE INTERNET

I used to hate the internet. Well I used to say I hated it. I was actually afraid of it but embarrassed to admit it.

I think I've told this story before somewhere but it was my first encounter with the internet that scared me off.

It was when I was living in a house down in Poole. The house was a lot like a squat, but we still had to pay rent. It was over the road from Poole library though so it seemed worth it. Poole Library was the only place in the whole of Dorset at the time with public internet access. So on my day off from work I went over to the library to see what all the fuss with this new internet thing was about.

In the library I found a computer sat down and  attempted to find out some information about "David Devant and his Spirit Wife" my favourite band at the time. I'm not quite sure how I intended to do this but whatever I did do completely froze up the computer. I think some files might have been deleted too. I freaked out. I was completely convinced that I had broken the entire Internet. I had scary visions of headlines in the Daily Mail screaming "Idiot boy in public library destroys decades of hard work" and of the world economy collapsing, and of everybody pointing at me and laughing, and for the rest of my life being known of as the boy that broke the internet and of people not serving me in pubs because of it.

I gingerly went up to the librarian and told her what I'd done. She explained to me that I hadn't broken the internet just the computer I had been sat at and told me that next time I wanted to use the computers perhaps I should ask for some help first.

I never really got over that first brush with the internet. For years I would claim the internet was bullying me or that it didn't really work. I know now though that this was just down to my own incompetence.I like the internet now. I like it a lot.

I started liking it a lot more after I got the hang of it. I was sort of forced into learning how to use the internet by having a girlfriend who lives thousands of miles away that I obviously want to stay in touch with and of course by everybody insisting on communicating with me via email.

I even managed to work out how to Twitter last night. It has only been nine months since I first attempted to sign up. Thats quite impressive considering it took me about a year and the help of three people to get me on Myspace only four years ago.I have a facebook too. I'm definitely making progress.

If you want to follow my progress my Twitter thingy is HERE. I also seem to be talking about sandwiches a lot