Living in, or avoiding, an internet world.

Yesterday got busy: running races against a two year old, walking to the park and then not stopping at the playground because the two year old had fallen asleep, going to my Italian conversation class and eventually walking back from the railway station in Greenfield through the bright evening. Out and about we spotted the heron fishing, quite successfully! It was fine day to be out and about and, indeed, fishing!

In the Italian class we talked about internet-related vocabulary, borrowed from English and adapted to Italian. So to log on becomes “loggare”, to click, “cliccare”, to scroll, “scrollare”, and to tag, “taggare”. There is even a ridiculous verb, “backuppare” and another, “whatasappare”. And so, telling someone to send you a whatsapp message turns into something that sounds like old-style comedy Italian-talking-English - “whatsappammí”.

As Whatsapp was reported to be having a bit of a security crisis yesterday, accounts being hacked and so on, we asked our Italian teacher, a Whatsapp user, if she had upgraded her system yet. She told us she had not had chance to do so yer but was not terribly worried as she puts nothing on social media that Russians, or indeed anyone outside her immediate group, would find interesting or, more importantly, consider to be something they could blackmail her with.

She has a healthy nonchalance towards stuff like that. So far she has not registered for settled status. As far as she is concerned, we are still a member of the EU and a small, optimistic bit of her is hoping Article 50 might yet be withdrawn. In the meantime she will not get stressed hunting for documents proving this, that and the other until she absolutely has to.

One of our number was totally confused by all the internet vocabulary. I think he uses email but I suspect his mobile phone is only used to sending and receiving phone calls. He must use the internet tonfind information because thatvus hiw he discovered the Italian class. But not only does he not use other social media but he has absolutely no idea what it does. Mind you, since he revealed that he keeps four pet sheep in his garden, we have all decided he is really on a other planet anyway.

There are, however, more dangerous forms of eccentricity than keeping pet sheep!