Why I'm giving an hour to Mr and Mrs OC...

I never quite understood why the UK still does the whole daylight savings thing. Right from being a nipper I’ve always forgotten when, during the year, the clocks go forward/back and the only way I can remember which is which is by the rather Americanised ‘spring forward, fall back’ mantra.

I remember a kids’ TV series which was on when I was younger called Eerie Indiana and one of the episodes was about the main character refusing to adhere to daylight savings and becoming trapped in the ‘lost hour’. Man, I loved that series. The lead actor in it was called Omri Katz and I had such a crush on him. What’s an hour anyway? What can you do in an hour? I could watch an episode of the fantastic new BBC series Frozen Planet. I could read about three pages of a module book (I get distracted easily). I could fritter away some time googling myself (yep, I’m a self-confessed paranoid narcissist). Or this afternoon I’m going to sit for an hour listening to my professor rambling on about post-modernism and post-fordism.

You can’t accomplish a lot within an hour, admittedly, but you can set a ball rolling. In my job I deal with a lot of social housing tenants, a lot of whom are elderly. A few weeks ago I came across a lovely old couple who I’ve since had some really good chats with about everything from what the area used to look like before the estate was built to how most of my life/job is done via a computer. Now this old couple have never really dabbled with computers, they’re in their early 80s, have just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary and live in comfortable bliss with each other. However, Mrs Old Couple is now pretty much house bound and can’t really get out, and she misses knowing what’s going on in the area and it’s so sad to hear how involved in the community she used to be, but can't be more.

Now some of you may remember that back in February I went to the National Digital Conference in London. There was a rather embarrassing interview with me on here which I simply cannot watch anymore for the sheer hatred of my voice, but following it I signed up to be a Digital Champion and pledged to help someone get online by 2012, but to be honest no opportunity has arisen as yet and I’ve not had the time to seek one out. Until Mr and Mrs Old Couple that is.

As part of the campaign there’s a ‘Give an Hour’ pledge and this is my chance to go for it. I’ve arranged with Mr and Mrs OC to go and visit them next week with my laptop. I have a mobile broadband dongle so I needn’t worry about connections or anything just yet. My plan is to show them that there’s a really great and easy way for Mrs OC to keep in touch with her friends and the community via the internet. A lot of the clubs she used to go to have websites and the Council have news pages she could read. These will give her much more up to date information than the free newspapers and can let her pick and choose what info she reads rather than only getting the info her husband remembers to pass on.

I don’t expect to be able to teach them much about the internet within an hour and depending on the availability of cups of tea and custard creams I may be there all afternoon, but I’m hoping it might just plant the seed in her mind that the internet isn’t something to be feared. My late father-in-law bought his first computer at age 75 and took to it like a duck to water, so there’s hope for everyone.