The conversation between an IT literate and an IT illiterate can be a painful one. I speak as one who knows. I am IT illiterate. With this in mind I usually try to avoid having such conversations with my other half. Especially as he has diagnosed that I have an inability to follow simple instructions!

This week however has seen him away with work. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be a problem. An odd phone call to inform me he misses me, can’t wait to see me and to enquire whether I have had anymore dodgy haircuts. But somehow he managed to forget his mobile phone. (Now of course some might say this all sounds highly dubious and the perfect excuse for him to have a nag free week! I agree it doesn’t look good, but then again we are talking about the man who once walked home from the petrol station and forgot his car!)

No problem he said, we can MSN. Typing messages into a little box and pressing return – what could be so difficult about that?! What indeed, well nothing bar the fact I kept getting disconnected and hopelessly confused in my attempts at troubleshooting. Increasingly terse messages from my beloved seemed to negate the idiom absence makes the heart grow fonder! I knew I was onto dodgy ground when the messages were being sent in CAPITAL LETTERS!

Fuelled by some kind of gun-ho mentality he then decided to go one stage further and give me a crash course in voice activated MSN! Still wondrous at the abilities of modern technology I took inordinate delight in pressing play and hearing his voice. Keen to reciprocate I pressed the buttons as instructed and started uttering words of endearment into the computer – nothing. So I began shouting words of endearment - still nothing!! By this stage I am sure the neighbours had a glass to the wall wondering what I was doing!

As 10 became 30 and then 45 minutes with still no sign of a functioning microphone utterings of endearment became mutterings of frustration. Acknowledging that my ineptitude had beaten him we agreed to abandon any further attempts to communicate in this way.

Only just recovering from IT overload I was disturbed by yet more technology, my mobile phone vibrating somewhere in my bag. Retrieving it I was rewarded by the much cheerier tones of the other half. Courtesy apparently of skype. (Skype it would seem being some internet telephone software rather than an oddly named friend lending him his phone!).

An email to my phone later the next day compounded my confusion. Phone calls from computers and emails from phones! Perhaps I would have been better off with old fashioned letter writing.