Big Mac - meet Little Mac

We spent most of last night watching and re-watching the video of the wedding of the century, very well made by the boy's film-graduate girlfriend, with me going in and out of the kitchen checking on how the Opor Ayam was doing.

Step-daughter had already forewarned me that she could not watch it without breaking down in tears, and the knew this because she had already watched it about 5 times before at home, without the benefit of our Bose speakers, belting out themes played at the event and composed a few hundred yards down the road here in little old Bath, by The Verve.

Oh yes, Opor Ayam. It's an all-white, Thai curry involving roast chicken and it's simple but time-consuming to make, but well worth the wait. While we waited, we watched the wedding video a few more times, and after we had eaten, we watched it a few more times again.

After we had watched a few more times again, we tried to copy it onto the desktop of the iMac, so we could watch it some more on a bigger screen, but - for some reason - it would not even acknowledge that it had any disc in it at all, let alone one of this calibre. It kept rejecting it (technical help from a Mac expert needed please).

So I said, "Let's Bluetooth it without wires."

H.I. said that our machine 'didn't play' Bluetooth, and I ask her how she thought the wireless trackpad worked. You have to understand that my temper was a little frayed by that point, having spent half an hour trying to use something a little less sophisticated.

So I spent another half hour introducing the laptop to it's big brother, and finally they acknowledged each other's presence. Then they fell out immediately, refusing to talk to each other for reasons of 'protocol'.

At this point, I interceded between to two of them, and finally got laptop to agree to hand over the video through the airwaves, a distance of about 15 inches. They really couldn't have been any closer.

Reluctantly, it agreed and began to display a progress report as to how the hand-over was proceeding. It began with the words, 'Time left - 3 hours and 28 minutes'. This was for a video of about 15 minutes.

At first, I didn't believe it and waited for the little blue bar to suddenly hurtle from left to right, filling up the blank space as it filled the iMac with the video. And then I waited some more.

After about half an hour, the progress report told us that we had 3 hours 14 minutes left to go, then it switched to 3 hours 29 minutes, then back to 3 hours 12 minutes. It carried on like this for about half an hour, before I gave up and disconnected iMac from laptop in a fit of parental infuriation. "If that's the way you are going to behave," I shouted, "then you can both go to bed without any supper!"

Laptop - being a spoilt brat - was allowed to stay up and play the wedding video about three more times before being taken home and put to sleep while the disc was inserted into a DVD player and replayed a few more times on a six-foot wide monitor nailed to the wall of the bride and groom.

As I cleared up after the happy couple had gone home, I found a pile of soaking wet paper hankies which had been left by the bride - and I mean soaking wet. I bet she went to work with puffy eyes this morning.