grumpyf1

You know when you haven’t been on the web or checked you email for a few days? No, me neither. Around a decade ago, deciding to go online was not a decision to be taken lightly. Our laptop (significant in itself – we had one web-capable device to share) took a while to boot up, and then there was the ceremonial laying of the modem cable - unravelling it from the reel and stretching it to the other end of the house, where the phone got unplugged so we could bathe in the warm glow of the internet. There was no surfing the web – if you were lucky, after the whistly-tweety dial up noises (and some possible “connection failed – trying again” messages) a trickle of internet reluctantly entered the house like a nervous mouse, ready to vanish at any moment. If someone emailed us a picture, it was time to go and make a cuppa. A 2MB photo would take several minutes to squeeze itself down the narrowband. Still, it was pretty awesome. In 10 minutes or so, we could be looking stuff up and...