My gran, who was born in a tiny Welsh village in 1896 and didn't see a car until she was almost 40, found the latter part of the 20th century pretty alien. She sat up with me and my dad to watch Neil Armstrong take a giant leap for mankind, but while my dad and I stared open mouthed at the snowy TV screen she sat there gently shaking her head. This, she seemed to be saying, may be one small step for him but it's a step too far.

I think it was at that point that she decided she'd start bowing out. She did so slowly - she spent another 15 years on this planet - but I don't think from that night she really felt she belonged here any more. Life had changed unrecognisably since the only transport she'd known were pit ponies and the odd bicycle, and she wanted none of it. At the time, I thought she was missing a trick. Now I think she just found it all far too tricky.

The last few years, I've recognised something similar in my mum.

My mum got married in the 1950s, when Doris Day and Rock Hudson graced the cinema screens with their fantastic American kitchen appliances, cars and love affairs. She, like all young British women of her generation, yearned after the walk-in fridges, automatic washing machines and waste disposal units and a man like Rock who understood exactly how to make a woman feel good. But as she's got older, she too has started wondering whether all this progress is as good as it's cracked up to be.

Despite having the first freezer in our street, and one of the first dishwashers, the leisure time that she'd been promised as a result seemed as elusive as ever, for of course she had had to go out to work to pay for them. TV screens got bigger, plane tickets got cheaper, but once she hit 70 she admitted she actually preferred to listen to the radio, and that staying at home in the garden was as nice as sitting beside a pool in Palma.

These days, she's probably one of the lowest tech people on the planet. Despite her children's enthusiasm for the Internet - she could spend hours everyday WWILFing, or What Was I Looking For-ing, as we both do, we tell her enthusiastically - she won't have a computer in the house.

An avid reader of the Daily Mail - the paper version, of course - she has reached the conclusion that if she has a computer plugged into the Internet, strangers the other side of the world might start plundering her bank account or ordering goods on her credit card or even send her begging letters.

How we all laughed five years ago, when she told us it wasn't natural, or even necessary, to be linked up to this fantastic, safe resource called the World Wide Web. But as the web has turned out to be a pretty tangled one, the laugh's on her. When her bank statement hits the doormat she doesn't worry that there may be an unauthorised transaction on it. And she knows there'll be a credit balance, too.

This last week, I've realised that I might be following in her footsteps. My computer has had a hissy fit, and I can't get onto the Internet at home. For 24 hours this was uncomfortable - no quick check of my emails first thing, no surfing the news sites by 8am to find out what had happened in the world since I last checked ten hours ago - but after that things got better. One day, I read a couple of short stories to pass the time instead. Another, I baked a cake - and got the recipe out of Mrs Beeton's, rather than off the Internet. Last night, my husband and I even sat and talked to each other.

"When will your computer be working again?" he asked.

"The man in the shop said a couple of weeks," I lied, for I haven't taken it to any shop.

"It's nice that you don't spend an hour or so surfing before you come to bed, now," he replied. He's right.

"Let's have another early night," I said. I know the way to his heart.

"You get the cocoa and I'll cut you another bit of that cake."