Picture This

You may notice that I've lurched into the twenty-first century now and have one of those thingys that tell you how many visitors you've had to your blog, and where they've all come from, thanks to Technology and Silverback, who did it all for me whilst I sat there trying to look encouraging and being grateful.

So now I'll find out if anyone actually reads this, apart from you wonderful people who leave comments. Hello World.

It all made me realise that I don't see icons, apart from ones that I expect to see. There's a little picture of a house at the top of my screen, and I'm told that this means the home page, and I spend half my life on the computer and I'd never noticed it.

And I'm the same with any pictures that are supposed to have a verbal meaning. There was a television programme called Catchphrase, which worked on the simple idea that you had a picture of a stone rolling down a hill gathering no moss as it went, and people had to guess the phrase it represented, and then say that the phrase was "A rolling stone gathers no moss!" and win a prize.

I could never do any of them. I'd be going "well, it's something round rolling downwards and there's some green stuff too".

Washing labels? Forget it! I've worked out that Crossed Out means Do Not, as in Do Not Place in a Circle. Whatever that means.

I do read fast though, so by the time I've worked out what a little picture's supposed to mean, I could have read - and yes, even understood - a full explanation.

It's not that I don't like pictures - I do. I just don't like pictures that ought to be words instead.