I bought myself a Wacom Bamboo Touch graphics tablet for my Christmas - I read rave reviews of how natural it is to use ("just like a pen" the adverts promise), how much better and more comfortable it is to use than a mouse and how much quicker it is to make selections in photo-editing and so on...and being a complete consumer, I bought it (the advertising AND the product!!)

So come Christmas morning, and Santa's been yay!! :o) Under the Christmas wrapping, the tablet is beautifully packaged, it's almost like opening a work of art - the box is beautifully designed, there's lots of lovely little touches which were really nice to see, everything (even the software CD) is wrapped just so...I install it and get to work, only to find it incredibly difficult to control the damn pen on the tablet. Maybe it's my rubbish hand/eye coordination (or maybe I'm just an old duffer) but it's really difficult to get in sync. I alter all the settings, blame the 'puter, blame the tablet, blame the blinkin' hamster and reset to Default but it makes not a jot of difference...I can't use it instinctively. Now, just over a month later, and I really have to make myself use it - I don't want to admit defeat and be beaten by technology so I struggle on. I *think* I'm getting more proficient at it, but it's difficult to tell

Which got me thinking. I remember aeons ago when I first had to handle a mouse, as it were, and that being a difficult and morale-sapping experience in that I could not get the hand and the eye to marry up...damn rodent had a life of its own over which I seemed to have little or no tactical control. And that made me remember when I was at primary school, learning to read and write, and having terrible difficulty in getting the pencil to do what it was supposed to do...goodness knows how many rubbers I got through before I could string a legible sentence together.

Just goes to show - forty years later, I stil kan't rite...