Taking the Tablet

“Honestly, Sheila, once you’re used to it – and it will take no time at all – you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it,” said Frances.

Sheila was suitably grateful – on the surface. But why couldn’t people realise that when you said you wanted a book, or perhaps even a book token, that was what you wanted. Not some piece of rectangular black plastic. And she still thought of a tablet as what you took when you got a headache (which might not be too far distant if Frances carried on enthusing at full tilt) or perhaps what you put in your washing machine, though Sheila was much inclined to prefer old fashioned boxes of washing powder. There was something solid about them, something trustworthy about their smell that those “clean linen” candles never quite managed to reproduce, though Shelia was quite a fan of scented candles.

Frances was fond of the phrase “You’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.” One day when her nerves were really on edge Shelia knew that she would forget her manners and say “Perfectly well, actually.” But even more nerve-grinding was, “You’ll have to enter the 21^st century some time, you know.”

Anyone would think I wore a bonnet and used a mangle, thought Sheila. Well, it was true she thought the former was very becoming, though any romance she might have harboured about the latter had been nipped in the bud by her great-grandmother’s stories of fingers getting caught in them. She still missed her great-grandmother. But Frances’s accusation was not true. Well, not entirely. And not necessarily by choice. She used a laptop at work and even had an email address, though she could have managed, she was sure, perfectly well without them. She even had a mobile phone, though she had never felt any inclination whatsoever, even had money been no object, to upgrade to a smart phone. And though (which was more than could be said for many of her colleagues) she was a quick and accurate typist, she had always considered texting the most tedious and unnatural means of communication in existence.

She’d upgraded to digital TV when there was no choice (and though she was no big TV fan, she would have missed The Antiques Roadshow and Great British Railway Journeys and the like) but saw no reason to swap her old radio for a digital one (the odd programme that interested her on 4 Extra was accessible via the TV anyway). She had not the remotest interest in streaming or playlists, though she didn’t quite know how to react to the fact that vinyl records had become fashionable again, though she did own a fifteen year old CD player, as well.

At times, for someone who seemed to go through life ignoring what people said, Frances could be oddly prescient. “Look, I know you said you wanted a book,” she said, “But in the first place I don’t know what you’ve read,” (which was a fair enough comment, though Sheila wasn’t averse to a little hint-dropping) “and in the second place, you can read hundreds – thousands of books on that. I did think of getting you a Kindle, but decided this was a better buy all ways round.”

Sheila knew what a Kindle was. She couldn’t help knowing, though to her it was still a word that spoke of glowing fires and crackling wood. But she had seen people using them on the train and in the park. And the same thought occurred to her every time – that wasn’t really reading! Reading meant turning pages – proper pages – and slipping in a bookmark, and having spines of old favourites a familiar presence on your bookshelf. Frances couldn’t even really convince her by pointing out that it meant she could read at night if she wanted to, and in comfort. Though Sheila was a bookworm, she was no lover of the 24/7 society. If she was wakeful at night (and she rarely needed the prescribed 8 hours) she would listen to the soft sounds of the night, or at most put on her radio, playing very softly. The thought of staring at a screen in the small hours, even to read a book, was against all she enjoyed and believed in.

But now Frances had given her this wretched tablet, and she supposed that to be polite she would have to at least go through the motions of using it.

“I could live without this,” she said, both literally and figuratively, to her cat, Patch, who was a purebred Siamese but still a rescue cat. Between the patch over his left eye that gave him his name, and his face not being quite the right shape, he hadn’t met the breed standard. Sheila much preferred the old-fashioned incarnation of the breed with its rounder face, anyway. Patch was sitting on his favourite seat; a basket chair with (and it was not wholly coincidence) a patchwork cushion. He turned his face, at the same time expressive and impassive on Sheila, and gave a rusty gate miaow that could either be interpreted as sympathy or boredom. Sheila chose to take it as the former, and gathered him into her arms. He didn’t wriggle in protest, and even snuggled his head against her shoulder. “I mean, I KNOW she means well, but I just don’t want it, and if that makes me sound like a spoilt prima donna, I don’t care.”

Patch miaowed again, as if to say “spoilt Prima Donna? You’re a total amateur, my dear!”

She had hoped to at least postpone the evil hour, but might have known that it wouldn’t be that simple. She had half forgotten (or chosen not to remember) that her neighbour, Sylvia, was Frances’s cousin. When Sheila went to put out her recycling bin, that was due to be collected the next day, she called over, “Happy Birthday, my dear,” and presented her with a box of chocolates. Well, it might not be original, and she preferred dark chocolate, but at least it wasn’t as, well consequential, as the tablet. “And how do you like the present Frances gave you?” she asked. “I was in on the secret, you know. I bet you can’t wait to get it all set up.”

There was no answer to that, but Sylvia went on to give it herself, anyway. “Of course you can’t. I know you’re a bit nervous about that kind of thing, so let me see to it for you.”

No, I’m not nervous about it, thought Sheila, I just don’t want to. And did Sylvia really have to make it sound as if she were a toddler reluctant to try a new food?

So the tablet was rendered “live” and after thanking Sylvia politely, Sheila looked at it even more apathetically. Sylvia, too, knew all the right arguments and could be quite persuasive. Or thought she could. “You do know that you can listen to your favourite radio shows and watch your favourite TV shows ANY TIME you want?” she enthused.

Sheila did know. She was not ignorant of the existence of BBC I-player, and “Sounds” (as they had rather irritatingly started to refer to the radio) and their commercial equivalents. But she was not one of life’s binge-watchers, or binge-listeners, come to that. Once more she thought wistfully of Great Grandma Anthea, or Granny Thea, as she often called her. She had by no means been one of those old ladies who made a cult of self denial, and especially where Sheila was concerned, had erred to the indulgent. But she was also a believer in everything in its time. A strawberry never passed her lips in winter, nor a slice of Christmas cake outside the festive season. She had owned a Video Recorder, though she had never made the leap to a DVD player, but generally tended to use it to watch pre-recorded videos of her favourite films or on historical subjects, not record things off the television. There was something just, well, wrong about watching Songs of Praise on a Monday or Inspector Morse at three in the afternoon. Sheila didn’t take things quite that far, but saw exactly what Granny Thea had meant.

Perhaps I will give in, she thought, wearily. Perhaps I will start listening to multiple episodes of A Book at Bedtime in the small hours and spending my Sunday mornings with repeats of Saturday Live. Perhaps she would even start online banking. After all, she would have no excuse not to, now, as she couldn’t say that she didn’t feel easy using a laptop in a public space, and that she didn’t have a Smartphone. But somehow she never quite trusted it, though she wasn’t amenable to any of the wilder conspiracy theories. Granny Thea had never even liked ATMs. Well, Granny, if you were living in this town now, you’d have to, as both the banks have closed, she thought. You couldn’t even blame it on the aftermath of lockdown, as it had happened a couple of years before. That was what happened when everything went online, thought Sheila. She stared at her tablet, not exactly with loathing, because, unlike (it seemed) some people, she knew the difference between an animate and an inanimate object, but with resignation. If Frances had actually respected her wishes she would be curled up with a book now, and Frances would have saved herself a great deal of money.

The wretched thing was even a stupid size, she thought. It was both too big and too small.

“Now didn’t I always tell you to be grateful?” The voice was familiar – very familiar, after all these years. And she looked at the screen and saw a very old lady with snowy white hair – except somehow she didn’t seem to be a very old lady, despite the snowy white hair – wearing a pretty floral blouse and a dark blue cardigan, a string of pearls round her neck.

“Yes, child, it’s me. Or it is I, I should say, though I always thought that sounded a trifle silly, for all I believe in proper grammar.”

Sheila replied as if there was nothing at all unusual or bizarre about the situation though of course there was. “Granny Thea, I did say thank you! I remembered my manners,”

“You did, I’ll grant you that. But you weren’t thankful in your heart.” The stern face suddenly softened into a smile. “Still, I won’t expect you to be a hypocrite.” Patch, ever curious, had leapt onto Sheila’s knee. “Fine animal you have there,” Granny Thea said, approvingly.

“I neither wanted it nor needed it,” Sheila said, and of course all three of them knew they referred to the tablet.

“I know. And don’t misunderstand me. I hate it when I see families sitting together all looking at different screens. Sometimes I worry that in a couple of generations people will have completely forgotten how to talk to each other in a proper manner. But you do have to move with the times, you know, love, and not just turn your back on progress on principle!”

“I don’t!” she objected.

“But that doesn’t mean that at times you wouldn’t want to,” Granny Thea, who had always been able to read her like a book, pointed out. “And I can understand it. But do you remember what I told you about the mangle?”

“I could hardly forget!” she pointed out. “It gave me nightmares for Paweeks.”

“Well, I’m not so sure about that, given that you were already secretly reading some of your mother’s Pan Books of Horror.”

“Not so secretly then,” she said, ruefully.

“Give it a chance, Sheila. Do you remember what I used to tell you about food?”

“I do. You’re allowed to not like it, but you’re not allowed to not try it. Though I have to say that you never expected me to eat anything repulsive like tripe or rotted fish.”

“Now you can hardly compare that contraption to tripe or rotted fish. Relax and watch now, Sylvia.”

Granny Thea was never bossy, but you generally did as you were told when she was the one doing the telling, and Sheila did now. Granny Thea’s face faded from the screen, but only a split second later, it was back – unmistakeably her face, but a young girl, running and playing with her friends, the summer air fragrant and warm, even though you couldn’t tell that through even the most state of the art tablets …… could you? They were in a garden with tall trees and bright flowers, and a broad green lawn, and a playful, adorable West Highland Terrier was frolicking around them. Even Patch, who generally regarded dogs with mild disdain, seemed to approve.

“Oh, this is such a perfect day,” Thea said, “I wish it could go on forever. At the very least, I wish I could – I wish I could save it and store it and make it mean that ….. that my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren could see it wherever they were in the world.”

“Well, there are already cine cameras, I suppose,” a sensible looking girl, whom Sheila knew without being told was called Cathy, said.

“Yes, I know, but – something they could hold in their hands, and take with them wherever they went.”

Cathy laughed, but not unkindly. “You always were a dreamer, Thea. Yes, it would be lovely, but such a thing will never exist. Not even – not even two hundred years from now.”

“Well, I reckon it will,” Thea insisted. “And – less than ONE hundred years from now!”