When I turned 50, I thought I’d reached my ‘Golden Age’. How wrong I was. I had reached the summit and since then began the descent into old age and ineptitude.

Once I prided myself in being a quick learner. I found schoolwork a breeze and could do most of my tasks with ease. I could adapt, innovate and eager to learn new technologies.

But when I turned 50, with diminishing energy came a reduced capacity to adopt and keep pace with changing technologies .

And from 60 the slide accelerated at an alarming rate.

Currently my bugbear is online shopping .

With increased traffic, the inconvenience of dug up roads and complete lack of parking space, online shopping seemed to be the perfect answer to the problem of an aging householder. Especially with EVERYTHING available in ONE shop and home delivered to boot .

But

And

A big BUT

One has to contend with shopping Apps that are not perfect.

Today for instance I found that two of the items I’d asked for didn’t come .

But it seems that those two items were not recorded on one list that was delivered but put on another list.

And I discovered this only after I checked with the invoice ( e invoice ) that it was not on the list of delivered items but was on another list which was yet to be confirmed or placed .

And all this is because I was NOT present when the items were delivered.

If I have to stay home the whole day for a delivery, how does it become ‘convenient’ ?

If the App automatically re-directs some items to another delivery how does it become convenient?

And every other day I am bombarded with messages in WhatsApp groups to beware of scams. We are warned NOT to attend to messages which could be traps. If I make an online payment, the delivery person claims it wasn’t received and demands cash. If I give cash, no change is returned.

So how does one shop ?

Perhaps it is time to go back to old fashioned shopping : visit the local bazar, check what you are buying and bring back only what you can carry .

What do you say?