Day 1: Opening the box

Having spent the preceding week like a 6-year-old suffering sleepless nights in anticipation of a new toy, I finally placed the order for my first tablet. OK, being a 58-year-old retired civil servant with copious amounts of OCD meant that I'd already trawled the Net looking for the device that met my usage criteria: once I'd worked out what that criteria would be, that is. After all, I didn't really need a tablet. My gaming rig PC (bought and paid for at great expense only two months previously) would more than accommodate my obsessive needs to play games and access the Internet for the next half-decade. So why do I feel the need to buy a tablet? The embarrassingly honest answer is: "Because everyone else has got one!". And not only everyone else! A lot of people I know don't even understand computers! But here I am getting e-mails with the subtext: "sent from my iPad", or somesuch! And, to boot, I am a devoted science fiction fan! I have lived with the concept of personal devices that enhances the knowledge base for years before this technology arrived. Everything from Jack Kirby's "Mother Box" in the comics to Charles Stross's "Singularity" in the hard Sci-Fi literature. Intolerable that I should do without when everyone else is playing with the new toys!

So, with consummate efficiency, it arrived. Ordered on Tuesday morning from Google Play, arriving Wednesday morning courtesy of TNT. Shakily breaking the seals, what do I find? One tablet. One micro-USB lead. One USB adapter. One plug. Two bits of paper: one legal warranty that no one reads; one "quick start" guide that comprises of two technical bits of advice (recharge the device and turn it on) and endless pages of Health & Safety instructions (don't use this near explosives, don't use this if you have a pacemaker, don't upset airline staff, don't pour acid over it, don't give it to kids, don't wipe your ass with it). All of it useful, I'm sure but none of it actually telling me how to use the damn thing!

So, you do what any chimpanzee does. You turn it on. Then, in the absence of the oh-so-familiar mouse and keyboard, you stab at the flat, glossy surface with your monkey fingers. And, because you believe yourself to be more evolved than said primate, you start running your greasy digits backwards and forwards over the screen in the same manner as you've seen the kids do (but without the easy, slick confidence of said teenagers, methinks). Accidentally tilting the screen, causing the gyroscope to do things that you absolutely KNOW a TV or a proper PC monitor doesn't do, you see a revolting film of skin grease and fingerprints that would give the average CSI operative an orgasm. Finally, after a few hours of making the pretty colours race backwards and forwards, and up and down, across the screen, you admit that you will NOT be the master of this particular device in a single day. With a sense of defeat you put the new toy to bed and, with the simplicity of the aforementioned 6-year-old, play with the cardboard box for a bit before returning to Skyrim on your beloved PC. Round 2 tomorrow.