Numbers

The first time I ever saw Windows was on a PC at Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering in late 1990. At lunchtime, I'd go and mess around with it, and then have a few games of Taipei whilst listening to the second album by Jesus Jones on my high-tech portable CD player. What a time to be alive.

As I recall, the first time I encountered Excel was at Barclays Bank, when I worked at their Radbroke Hall site in 1993. I remember my colleague Nigel telling me that a guy he knew was keeping a spreadsheet of all the roads his baby daughter had travelled on. (Now there's a man struggling to show his love.)

I'm not scoffing; I keep spreadsheets of all sorts of stuff: my exercise, my weight, my drinking, and, since, 1994, every transaction that has been through my bank account. And you, in turn, may scoff at me, but that banking spreadsheet once saved me eleven thousand points during an inspection of the company books by HMRC!

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Reading: 'Meet Mathilda, Rocket Builder' by Dom Conlon