syntax#1

Join Xerra on a
trip with VIC into
Adventure...
Chapter One
I sat in the armchair in my grandfather’s house
staring nervously at the television set. The blinking
cursor of the Vic 20 flashed accusingly at me. I was
about to be found out.
This was the summer of 1981. The year I had finally
left junior school, to my great delight, and was
looking forward to starting secondary school after
the six week holidays that we had back then. I was
twelve years old and for me the home computer
revolution was just beginning. We had recently had
the royal wedding of Charles and Diana, there
seemed to always be snow every year in December
and this was the first time I’d ever been allowed to
go all the way to Wrexham in Wales to stay with my
grandparents from my mother’s side. Excited wasn’t
the word because I knew Grandad had recently
bought the Vic 20 and I was just itching to get my
hands on it.
“Okay, Tony. You’ve told me you love playing with
computers so now here’s your chance. Show me
what you can do with one.” Grandad was not really
one to mince words.
I glanced at Grandad hoping he was going to have a
giggle then pull out some program tapes but he just
glared sternly at me. “You said you had used
computers and knew how to program them?”
I gulped. “I’ve seen some at school. And I’ve looked
at the ones in Harrow. I do know about computers.”
But, as my grandfather had just discovered, I only
knew all this from the games I’d seen and some
adverts I’d seen showing them off. I’d been caught
out and all I could think was that I’d let him down.
We had only two sessions on the computer in the
whole ten days I spent in Wales. In retrospect I
don’t think he lost interest in us spending time
doing this but more of a case that I was finding
myself at that age and spent a lot of time going off
on other pursuits as teenagers are prone to do. He
was very ill by that time so, on both occasions, it
was Nan who actually dragged us away from the
machine when we’d been messing with it for too
long. I learned a little bit more about the Vic by the
time I came back, as well as finally teaching myself
to swim and wandering all over Wrexham exploring.
When I came back home and got ready to start
secondary school, there were two things definitively
on my mind. I wanted a Vic 20 and I was absolutely
determined that I was going to prove to Grandad
that I could do something with it. I was lucky
enough to get the opportunity in 1987 a short while
before he passed away but I will never forget the
moment I let him down until my dying day.