The Microbee was my first computer, bought by my mother from the school she taught at when the school was replacing them with Apples.

I came home one day and there it was on a little desk just high enough for me to sit at, and I was so excited that we finally had a computer of our own. Mum knelt before it typing incantations on its clicky-clacky keyboard, and suddenly it began to play "When The Saints Go Marching In", and I don't need to describe the sense of wonder I felt because everybody here has had that same wonder at some point in their lives.

I asked her to tell me how she'd done it, and she just smiled and handed me the BASIC programming guide and gave me a hug, and from that moment onward I was hooked. I read that manual back to front a dozen times over, got my hands dirty poking around CP/M, and wrote hundreds of little games and tools and silly programs in the years that I owned my little 'bee.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Microbee (and my mum's ability to engage my sense of wonder) literally decided the course my life would take.

Thanks, Microbee, and I love you, mum.