The bright side of modern technology

 

I was round my friend’s house a while ago, enjoying a civilised glass of prosecco before a quiet night out with the girls (I don’t think I need to tell you how the night actually panned out but let’s just say that the next day I had to retire back to my bed shortly after unsuccessfully keeping down two paracetamol which I felt sure would be the answer to all my post-drinking nightmares)…..

Anyway, prior to the night taking its messy turn of events, I’d spotted a little gadget on my friend’s dining table which seemed to be throwing out some rather modern pop music at a noise level that filled the entire room (and the rest of house too, judging by the way in which her husband and kids slammed the door on us while they tried to watch TV in the room next door). In short, it sounded fantastic.

Upon further enquiries my friend explained that said gadget was a portable speaker and that she and the kids could simply connect their phones to the speaker and play all their saved music to their heart’s content. Heck, they could even take it on holiday and play music whilst in another county (and possibly even a different country but I need to verify this as part of my ongoing enquiries).

This was quite a revelation to me.  I’ve heard of such items of modern technology, but as someone who still considers moving their CD player and plugging it into a different room in the house as being ‘portable’, I was astounded that something so small could throw out so much sound, with so much ease and no plug involvement whatsoever.

I had to have one!

And so, with the prospect of hosting a garden party for Molly’s birthday where her only request had been for pizza and music, I decided to dispense with the rather unsightly speakers and sound box that I had been planning to plug her phone into, whilst running an extension cable down to where her and her friends would be sitting, move with the times and treat the family to a portable speaker!

I settled on a little number that was decently priced and seemed to attract positive on-line reviews and after hot-footing it to Argos to pick it up, I proudly showed it off to Molly, managing to resist the urge to brag about how ‘current’ I had suddenly become.  Still not completely sure of the workings behind this wireless object of sound, I was relieved to see that it came with not only a charger (I am the type of person that needs the reassurance of a charging cable for when any piece of modern technology drops below the halfway battery life mark – you should see my panic to get to a petrol station when the gauge wavers below half a tank), but also a little cable to…..plug a phone in to it!

However, as I demonstrated my extreme excitement about this cable finding to Molly, she looked at me like she’d just been offered a dog poo sandwich and said, ‘Mum, when would you ever need to plug a phone into the speaker? The whole point is to use Bluetooth so you don’t need to plug it in.’

Oh. Okay.

First of all, what even is Bluetooth?

And secondly, how come when we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way to holiday, some other car tried to connect to the Bluetooth in my car?  ‘Tell him NO Molly!’, I shouted, whilst trying to keep a constant speed of one mile per hour – do you know how hard that is? ‘He’s not using our Bluetooth, the cheeky bugger!’ And despite being assured (amongst much eye-rolling and tutting) by Molly that Bluetooth doesn’t work like WIFI, I switched the car’s sound system off until the Bluetooth-snatching car was well out of range.

Back to the speaker then and to Molly’s party – both of which seemed to be a resounding success. I kept out of the way, leaving her and her friends to their own (cutting edge) devices, hoping that the neighbours weren’t too troubled by the increasing noise level. And I smiled later on in the evening as the music got louder (thanks to the funky new speaker) and the sound of a bunch of fourteen year olds singing at the tops of their voices to Mr Brightside, yes Mr Brightside! filled the garden…and possibly the street.

Out of all this, I think that my little venture into the twenty-first century has proved to me that Molly’s generation may well have the edge when it comes to gadgetry and knowing how to use it – but if the timewarp I’m stuck in has managed to deliver the kind of music that these young ‘uns appreciate as much as I do, then I reckon I’m happy to linger there for a while longer…..