In a world where one has seen a sober European minister addressing an empty podium as our Prime Minister goes awol, my experience in the public library this morning is small beer. But it continues to rankle. Having used the library very seldom over the past few years – and not knowing my way around – I asked one of the librarians where to look for anything by Rory Stewart. Rather surprisingly, he didn’t recognise the name. More surprisingly still, instead of directing me to the non-fiction shelves (though I was later to find these were not in strict alphabetical order) he more or less pushed me down onto a chair in front of a computer screen and told me to type in the name.
Affronted though I was, I do know how to type (not everyone does) and typed it in. Then, having no idea what to do next, I swivelled round in my seat and yelled: NOW WHAT?
Now a different assistant came to the rescue and, though I would always prefer to be my own search engine (that is to say, look along the shelves of books with my own eyes), she did quickly establish that this library had none of Rory Stewart’s books, but offered to order them from another branch.
At this point, I chickened out of my good intention to borrow rather than buy and made for the nearest bus stop, only to find that there, too, being literate was no longer enough. The board on which I used to be able to read when my bus was due, and to track its progress, has vanished. Instead, we have a poster inviting us to use our mobile phones for travel information.
What makes Transport for London think we all have – can all afford to have – a mobile phone? And why do the powers that be assume that everyone is computer-literate?
It is time for another Pattie Moore.* The world is full of old people who are being cast into outer darkness because they cannot – or do not want to – join the modern world: a world in which a cheque I issued the other day has not been honoured because some clever scanning machine could not read my writing.
As someone who once leant out of the car window on the outskirts of Birmingham and asked ‘which way to London?’ (and then got to London), and who has heard stories of satnavs taking people the wrong way down busy streets, I prefer to trust in human speech and the old skills of reading and writing.
Anyway, it isn’t possible to catch up, even if I wanted to. I have just learnt that my pride in my ability to use e-mail is misplaced, e-mail is already yesterday’s toy.
*To learn about this remarkable woman, who spent three years convincingly disguised as an octogenarian, to experience being old, click the link to listen to this excellent BBC Radio 4 broadcast.