The Olden Days ... and forgotten passwords

Whenever I get the chance, I like to horrify young people by telling them stories from the Olden Days, such as ‘bookshops used to have a cash resister on the counter and that was all, and you had to work out the change in your head, and you had to remember where every book in the shop was … ‘ and ‘when I came for my first day’s work at an office job, I was shown to a desk with a chair on each side, two manual typewriters back-to-back and one telephone.’ However, there is a downside to having so much history stored in my head, and that is that there is no room left in there for the multitude of usernames and passwords one needs to remember in order to operate the interwebs. My young nephew, who usually comes to the rescue when I suffer a bout of technical bamboozlement, has been travelling overseas, and his blithe parting words that he would be ‘always available – on email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook or Skype’ proved to be pretty useless when I couldn’t log in to any of them! This is a long-winded way of admitting that I haven’t checked my email for a very long time (if fact, the password problems became so insumountable I now have a new email account at gladys.bembo@gmail.com), which is why I am only reporting the item below some months after the event …