Most average and daily sort of people know that technology is advancing far faster than their poor little brains can cope, not to mention their bank accounts. I personally am giving myself five years between computer purchases, king pin for a day and old-hat for 4 years and 364 days. In fact by the time this last five years is up my laptop might have become a museum piece, an antique for all to stare at in wonderment!

For me though, technology is not advancing quick enough! This feeling of insufficiency of being caught in a backward sliding time warp was a surprise to me as much as it is to you upon reading this.

It all started when I caught my nine month old son underneath the computer table, the right hand attempting some finite electrical repairs, the left struggling unsuccessfully to drink some water out his cup - the one that sprays everywhere if turned upside down. Apart from proving to me that he was not ambidextrous, I realized that I would have to do something very serious about the myriad of cables and wires that would put a pot of noodles to shame.

I sat down and studied the problem, eleven sockets in permanent use going into two extension leads and thus into the wall! Power for the computer, the speakers, the printer, the scanner! More power for the little peripherals that end up on a computer desk: the digital camera and phone chargers, the paper shredder, the ..get the idea? But not all wires end up at the extension leads, noodles never wrap nicely on a pair of chopsticks! The USB, keyboard microphone, scanner and mouse cables to name but a few like to go their own ways!

I came to the immediate conclusion that I would have to move all these wires up and away. I battled morally with overcrowding the already cluttered printer table at the top, but when weighing this against a son lit up like a light bulb, it had to be done.

Whilst tying myself in knots and shouting hysterically at the wife to remove my now very excited son, I started to drift into a new dimension, I started to wander what all this technology was about when I had spaghetti junction like this in front of me. In our house we have two laptops, one desktop computer and in all sixteen speakers (not including those in the remote controlled car, the baby piano and the doll that says "I've peed my pants" when you clap your hands). We also have a mass of ear phones that never get used, packaged en-suite with mobile phones, walkmans, etc. Anyway, an additional television, 2 DVD players, stereos, 2 Ipods, 3 digital cameras and a possible 8 mobile phones (of which only two function correctly!) simply means that the house is cluttered with wires stretching from here to the end of the pot and back again. A veritable melting pot of noodles!

Oh, and because the newly purchased Ipods are not perfect without a docking station and since my wife's laptop is now reminiscent of a gramophone of the music industry we have to add to the growing list of cable entrails that already tie the house in knots.

It all sounds like rather allot of equipment, but please go and count what you have in your own house first before making judgment! You will be surprised. And I didn't even include the little mini-vacuum cleaner that is so very handy for those little nooks and crannies that the conventional cleaner cannot reach into, and that electric toothbrush which is such a poor showing of decadence, although everybody seems to have one - a gift they all say!

Sitting awkwardly behind the table I cursed volubly, having connected the printer USB cable to where the scanner was, up instead of down; I felt then like abandoning the project. Instead I continued onwards and took myself into that other dimension, the ones were dreams give stability!

...I can see a computer, flush against the wall (who knows what's behind and who cares)! Just that one computer: one hard drive for everybody and a screen in each room. No wires visible yet! No televisions - the computer screens serve that purpose. And the laptop, what of that you may ask? Who needs one anyway? What about my digital camera, my phone and Ipod? All one and the same, a simple slim line box that slides into the pocket instead of three separate devices with three very annoying and different chargers...

I snapped myself out of this very pleasurable trance and once back in the land of the living I made a note that most of my dreams were available on the market already, at a price that excluded most average people (myself included). I carried on with my task but after accidentally snipping through the printer cable rather than the cable tie that held it in place I slid easily back into that more pleasurable and wireless paradise.

... All family members have their own personalized remote control. Click a button in the bedroom for some music, a DVD; papa in the study working at his computer has around him a screen and an infra red mouse and keyboard; mama in the kitchen watching television! And the central hard drive copes with everything. No more DVD players, video players, stereos, etc! Just that screen, the speakers and the central hard drive ...

Accidentally ripping the cable out of the phone charger my dreams turned to chargers!

... Everything runs on 4.5volts. One charger fits everything from the phone to the mini vacuum cleaner; everything runs on the same type and design of battery. Each room has one charging socket, simply a little shelf where devices can be slid into the socket that charges! Buy a new mobile phone, use the old charger back home. Buy a new electric toothbrush, "don't need the charger thank you sir", in fact I don't need the electric toothbrush but never mind! The dream kept me going as I imagined the joy of chucking hundreds of chargers into the bin ...

My son took that moment to bring my head back down from the fluffy white clouds above. In his typical sliding style he bashed into the computer table with enough force to give it a heart attack. On a normal day this would have been okay but during these times of crisis all was not as it should have been. The two speakers that I had placed on the top deck prior to their eventual repositioning came crashing down to earth. They landed on top of the glass screen of the scanner, one of those unfortunate instances as I had just opened it up to give it a quick wipe, and cracked it diagonally corner to corner.

... Why isn't my scanner combined with the printer and the photocopier, why do I need a special printer for photographs .... one multifunctional printer in the house, press a button anywhere and it comes out in the study why do we have a separate phone line, isn't the one connected to the computer able to take a phone ... And no more satellite dishes or decoders, everything goes through the broadband cable - everything and including the television channels ...

Enough dreaming; now I am obliged to purchase an additional scanner, never mind a possible pair of speakers. And to shovel the soil on top of my coffin the wife came in at that moment saying dinner was on the table. Don't take me wrong, dinner is fine and I was getting hungry, but she had cooked noodles!

Hurry up technology, your too slow for me!