Status-Q

I was delighted to meet my great-nephew Jonathan — my brother’s daughter’s son — for the first time at the weekend.

I remember, in my childhood, meeting my Great-Aunt Grace.  (She deserved that degree of capitalisation.)  Though always kind, I remember her as a rather formidable woman from a different world.  She lived in central London (which she knew like the back of her hand), was born in the 19th century, and had lived through the reign of several monarchs of whom, at the time, I was only very dimly aware.  She died just before the advent of the personal computer.

And I guess that, in a few years, that’s how Jonathan may think of me.

“Great-uncle Q”, he will say, “was a relic of a bygone era.   He used to write code himself, rather than getting a machine to do it!  He even, can you believe, used a QWERTY keyboard! Have you ever seen one of those things?  Wait – I have a photo of him somewhere, but it’s only two-dimensional…”