Years and years ago, probably around the time I regularly wore a pair of blue tartan trousers, my Uncle Ron, from London, sent us over something amazing. It was called a Sony Walkman, an intriguing piece of technology that came wrapped in a blue leather cover.
You could put tapes in it, then stick on headphones and take the brick-like yoke into the garden or park to listen to your music. I brought it into school. We didn't have show-and-tell, like on US television, but that didn't stop me showing and telling ad nauseam.
Within a couple of years the Ingle family Walkman - a 1979 TPS-L2 according to one "vintage Walkman" website - had become a relic. Battery acid leaked all over the lovely cover, and, anyway, people with bright-yellow sports Walkmans and slimline Walkmans were laughing at ours.
Decades passed. I started to see people with white earphone leads coiled around them. You could tell, just by the way they walked, that these people thought the white earphones made them look cool.
In the beginning, it seemed as though only people wearing imported Japanese T-shirts and asymmetrical haircuts were allowed to have them. Next, all of a sudden, they were being sported by people who worked in banks and wore white trainers over their barely-black nylons while power-walking to work. Then, one day, I saw an elderly woman fiddling with one at a bus stop. It was around this time that I developed an irrational hatred of the device. I couldn't help hearing through the grapevine that they were called iPods.
I thought of our old Walkman. How, despite its leather cover, it had ultimately let me down. I just couldn't keep up with the technology, and I have had a feeling of being left behind ever since. Realising I had developed a bad case of iPhobia, I became outwardly convinced that all the iPod malarkey was just a gimmick for show-offs while secretly acknowledging that even if I had one I wouldn't be able to work it. I resolved never again to get involved with a personal audio device, especially one with earphones that came in colours known as "undercover black" or "status symbol white".
Oops. I wasn't looking for anything serious when it happened, but isn't that always the way? I was in a mobile-phone shop on Grafton Street, and I swear I didn't know mobile-phone shops sold iPods. Our stereo had broken down, and we were in the market for a new one. In the shop my head was turned by an iPod nestling in what looked like its mother ship but turned out to be an oblong speaker. I pictured every CD I owned being sucked inside the iPod. I saw it and the speaker sitting on top of the 1950s radiogram that was in the house when we bought it. One iPod and speaker: sold to the couple with dopey looks on their faces and no idea how to use them.
But look at us now. Not realising that you can hire people to do this annoying job for you, I spent a weekend ripping our CD collection to the hard drive of our computer, then uploading it onto the iPod. No more messing around with CD covers. At the merest caress of the iPod we can go from Dexy's Midnight Runners to Juliet Turner to The Libertines to U2 to The Beatles to Chuzzle to Duke Special to Ron Sexsmith to Madonna to The Smiths. I haven't listened to as much music since the days when I regularly wore a tartan miniskirt and Doc Martens. Our iPod doesn't get out much - I can't leap the "status symbol white" hurdle - but it's our stereo now; we will never go back.
We've had good times in the few months we've been together. At our low-key and intimate New Year's Eve dinner I realised that I lacked appropriate music. Dusty Springfield was suggested, so off I went to the iTunes music store - conveniently located on the computer in my study and open 24 hours. Within a few minutes I had bought and downloaded the best of Dusty and the best of Doris Day. Then I bought a bit of Aretha Franklin and a bit of Irma Thomas. I'm listening to stuff I never would have bought from a record shop.
I can't stop talking about this revelation, and my family and friends are saying I've become a total iBore. As if.
PS: I was in work the other day and couldn't help noticing a colleague was plugging her iPod into her computer. Word is that you can save documents on your iPod. And audiobooks and photographs and videos. I've heard that it can read your mind and tell you the music you want to hear at any given moment. If you don't mind, I'll go and have a little lie down.