However, Maureen and her husband were starting to feel disconnected from their families, with telephone conversations not filling the void of seeing their loved ones. One of their sons bought them a laptop after the pair said they finally wanted to try and get themselves online.
“I said to my eldest son that I wanted to be able to video call and do food shopping on the internet,” she says. After seeing adverts on the television for online shopping and video calling, she thought now would be the ideal time to try their hand at it.
“I felt like we were falling behind and would get forgotten about if we didn’t at least try something and try new technology. We already have internet installed for when my grandchildren visit and use it for their gadgets, so we didn’t need anyone to come out to do that.”
A few days later, the laptop arrived, but Maureen found herself overwhelmed by it all. “I must admit, it was scary when it showed up and I was thinking to myself ‘I’m probably going to break this somehow’.” But, with a little guidance from her grandson, she was up and running in no time.
“He was wonderful and must have the patience of a saint because I had a lot of questions,” she recalls. “I wrote everything down as I went along, and he made it very easy for me to understand, which I am very fortunate for.”
After spending the next day with her husband reading through her grandson’s instructions, and reading the manual, the couple spent a few hours going through it all again to familiarise themselves with how it works.
“Connecting to the internet was much easier than I thought, but we still had to make an email address, which filled me with dread.”