The Square Window

I bought an iPad yesterday.

So I probably won’t be bothering much with blogging for a bit until the shine wears off my new acquisition.

I also won’t be bothering much with paying any attention to my children either though I shall probably remember to throw them a crust of food periodically and look up from time to time to make sure that Three is still on the property and neither of them are in mortal danger.
It’s been a long academic year one way and another, what with Kindergarten, Husband’s tenure bid (delivering the case at the end of this month!), two back-to-back birthday parties in the last three weeks, all the end of term festivities, my recent re-entry into the working world etc. and I am quite desperate for a break, to get away to where there are no demands on me and I don’t have to cater to anyone else’s needs.

I do have my London trip coming up in just under three weeks, which shines like a beacon of hope and glory ahead of me. (I don’t know how I did without these trips before, honestly) but actually, I couldn’t wait for that. I just HAD to have something this minute NOW to remind me I was an adult, a grown person, someone who was part of the real, contemporary outside world, not someone who was tied to a small house in a small town with small children, and when I did meet other people I made small talk.

And also (this is very important) that I am ALLOWED to buy whatever the fuck I want because I earned my own money last week and the kids aren’t the only ones who get new toys.

*I should note that actually nobody asks me to justify any of my purchases, it’s just a maternal guilt thing I seem to have bestowed upon myself. Out, damned spot!

I also thought that owning one would help me in some unspecified way with my work. The aforementioned earnings were actually from a composition that will be deployed on a mobile device including the iPad (yes, all 4 seconds of it!) and as I plan to acquire more clients of this nature, it is only sensible to own one.

See? I really need it! I will be writing it off against tax which means it’s actually free, right?

There have been some claims that the iPad is ‘magical’.

Well, it is and it isn’t.

On a practical level it is an elegant piece of technology, not a piece of magic. And no doubt it will become more and more sophisticated and in ten years’ time we will laugh at how fabulous we thought it was.
I watched a friend excitedly show her guest her iPad today and as I looked at them I remembered, vividly, the first computer I bought for making music and how proudly I showed my Dad what it could do and he was suitably amazed.

It was an Atari with a whole 1mb (yes, that’s one megabyte) of memory, and I ran Cubase on its tiny, slow, black and white screen. It saved midi information but no actual sound, and when I’d finished writing the music sequence I’d save it on a floppy disc.

A floppy disc! Remember those?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And I had a viciously expensive sampler which I bought with the insurance money from my car that was conveniently run over by an 18wheeler lorry.

The Akai S3000 was a giant lump of a machine which cost £2000 (!) and I could sample about 30 seconds of sound on it at a time. One also saved the sounds on to floppy discs.

Listen, you laugh, (or else you’re googling floppy discs and trying to work out how soon I’m collecting my pension), but this was pretty par for the course in the 90’s.

That loyal, stable Atari lasted me for nearly a decade, slow though it was, but when I replaced it, finally, with a Mac, I could hardly believe what I’d been dealing with all that time. The speed! The power! The things I could put into the actual computer! The INTERNET!

Then of course I felt astonished that I’d been impressed by what I’d had before – it seemed so…primitive.

I’m sure my iPad will feel primitive in a few years when something even more amazing comes out, but for now, oh, it’s so pretty!
And there are so many apps to discover and play with or learn with or look at or even share with your family if you are so inclined (me, not so much for right now, at least).

I bought the Alice in Wonderland app today. I am a terrific Lewis Carroll/Tenniel purist, you know -I simply can’t bear any Burton/Disneyfication – and I am fairly hardline about alternative illustrations or abridged versions of the book, although I will make exceptions in certain circumstances.

It was utterly compelling. I particularly enjoyed the moving shower of colourful licorice comfits that Alice pulled out for prizes at the end of the Caucus race.

Over the next week or two, as Three and SIx run wild in the garden in the late afternoon sun and the pot of tea cools unheeded on its silver tray by my side, I will most likely be found face-down in the app warren, and it is here that I shall find some space, and some escape from the small walls of Stepford without ever leaving my chair.

And that is a sort of magic.