TECHNOLOGY is once again conspiring against me.

I kind of like technology but there are vast swathes of it I just don’t understand and bits I don’t really want to understand.

For a start, I love the fact that when, for example, we are planning to go away to a holiday home in the wilds of Wales, I can Google Map where we are going and check out the immediate surroundings they don’t show you on the holiday cottage site.

I also love being able to see the menus of restaurants I might go to eat at, and then seeing what other people thought of the restaurant.

I even like, and I can’t believe I’m admiting to this, occasionally skipping through Facebook to see where people have gone on holiday.

I myself was guilty of it last year when we went to Australia and New Zealand and although I’m sure there were some who hated me shoving our amazing time down their throats, other people loved it – well liked it anyway.

Just the vast array of knowledge at your fingertips still blows my mind – very useful when doing the school quiz, but then more on that in a few weeks!

My children still can’t get their heads around the fact that when I was researching an essay I had to use a thing called books, in particular the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which I had to go down to the local library to use.

But then, as I keep on telling them, they are the new emerging generation of techno wizzkids to which the internet, social media, apps, games and the such like will be second nature.

And yet even they cannot figure out how to operate the app the Beautiful Wife now has to use to claim her expenses.

It’s been a plague beseiging our house for the last three weeks with the BW resentfully slogging through privacy settings, camera settings, i-phone settings and all sorts of other gubbins just so she can get a few petrol receipts on to a computer screen so she can then email them to accounts.

We’ve had tears, we’ve had swearing (very unlike the BW) and even a broken mug. Not my Penguin Books one, so don’t panic!

At one point she even resorted to asking me for help.

As I write this column the situation is still not resolved, although I am sending a really big box of chocolates to Leanne in IT for saying she will help her out next Wednesday – thanks Leanne.

Expenses-gate, as I like to call it, was made worse this week with the introduction of another technological beast the BW hates – shoot-em up! computer games.

It was brought into the house very much by stealth, as part of a compilation of games that the boys wanted because it had something on it called Portal, the precurser to their current fav game, Portal 2.

I discovered its existence when I overheard from the front room: “Quick, blow him up with a rocket launcher.” Which didn’t sound much like the puzzle-solving platform game I thought Portal was.

We were all busted when the BW came in and demanded to know what Team Fortress 2 was and how it came to be in our house.

“Daddy bought it for us!” was the reply.

I hate technology!

WEEKEND WINDOW

“Thanks to everyone for all the support and acknowledgement given me over the years during my mission of art.” - Colin

Send in your Weekend Windows to neil.darcy-jones@nqe.com