Memory Lane

Another day spent tackling the backlog of all the stuff which we have been storing for our eldest son, and which he has now given us permission to dispose of, including this Spectrum computer. I was surprised that he agreed that this particular item could go, because the Spectrum was his first computer, a Christmas present when he was about twelve. (It’s not actually the original one we bought, it was a replacement I bought for him as a surprise on the fledgling website eBay in 2004 when he was bemoaning the fact that his beloved ‘computer museum’ didn’t have his first computer in it!)

Sadly, when he opened his present on that Christmas morning in 1986 it didn’t work! The poor chap had to wait for a couple of weeks while it went back and was either repaired or replaced, which he found an agonisingly long time. When you look back now at its 128K capacity, it’s laughable, but at the time it was such an innovative product and it was the beginning of his love affair with computers, which I always tell him he inherited from me. 

I had my first experience of computing back in 1968, when I worked at the University of London Atlas Computing Service as a secretary. I used to help one of the programmers out on a Saturday by sorting punched cards, and he told me that I had an aptitude for computing. That story makes my son roll his eyes, as sons have a habit of doing when their Mums reminisce …