Update Your Dinnerware

Are you still eating off those 2015 plates? Time to download an upload and offload a soufflé...or so the digital world would have it. The kitchen may be a world away from the editing desk, but I often wonder at the ease and facility with which I eat my dinner - on some very old plates - as compared to the time spent in front of this computer. I'll bet I'm no different from a lot of the readers who use a variety of pots and dishes and never think of it. A typical dinner at our house is cooked on a stove or in an oven that is less than 5 years old - the original appliances in the kitchen having served for some 35 years before replacement. But the pots that they simmered in may be anything from 50 to 70 years old. And if we do a roast chicken it is carved with a knife and fork set that is 125 years old. The fact that it is still working and not in some antique road show is because it is not broken, and carves chicken like a beauty. Our family gets value. Contrast this with the computer which this is being typed upon. I have just been informed that it is late 2015 and so aged that it cannot accept another operating system update - leaving me to either fall behind in current requirements for computer security or whack out another $ 2500 for a new device. This same dismaying discovery probably applies to my printer and scanner as well and the prospect of having to take up train robbery again is looming. I don't mind being sold a pup, but I do object to having to buy a new one while the old dog's still wagging its tail.