I had a friend call me this week from Erskine to say she now had access to 4G on her internet connection.

This was shameless gloating as she knew I have never had a fast internet connection.

And what made it worse for me was the fact I had a bit of a nightmare technology week.

Not only was my worldwide web connection slow, or non-existent, I also dropped a full cup of tea over my laptop.

I did the sensible thing and took it to the technical people, who declared it dead.

Sadly for me, my information couldn’t be retrieved. Thankfully, I had already backed up most of what was important, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.

But that was only the beginning of the technical troubles.

I had to buy a new laptop and, of course, it then had to be loaded up with all the software you need for it to work.

Fine - but the black laser printer that has been working perfectly for the last 12 years won’t work on the new system.

So, even though we live close to the very factory that produced the computer and the same company that made the black laser printer, I had to buy a new printer.

Now, what happened to the recycling we are encouraged to do?

The problem is the old printer was obviously made very well – too well – as it lasted for years.

To get the customer to pay more, a new model has been produced, which is less robust, with cheaper parts, and you need to buy different ink.

It did make me question the recycling issue we are all concerned with.

Why are we bothering, when the manufacturers aren’t making life easy for us?

And when I thought about taking the ‘faulty’ equipment to the civic amenity centre, I stopped in my tracks, as I remembered the council still hasn’t installed the crushers that were sold elsewhere.

Whilst I am very happy for those with 4G internet connection, it’s frustrating that it hasn’t yet reached my street.