When she enthusiastically asked if I was on Facebook she was not to know I have resisted every "innovation" with any whiff of technology since I was about 11, with the possible exception of the ballpoint pen.
Perhaps my mastery of the typewriter and the dial telephone fooled her when she sat near me in the Otago Daily Times newsroom back in the late '70s.
She may not remember my battles with the carbon paper on those rare occasions extra copies of my riveting stories were required for sending to other parts of the country through the Press Association.
I could never reliably sandwich the carbon and the copy paper together correctly for insertion into the typewriter.
Mostly, instead of an extra copy, I produced a useless double-sided offering.
It's possible my vehemently non-smoking former colleague, who now teaches computing, could not see through my cigarette haze whenever I struggled to change my typewriter ribbon.
It was never a straight-forward swap of the old and the new with many grubby times spent winding the new ribbon on to the old spool by hand.
I was quick to tell her I was not on Facebook.
When she suggested it was a great way to share photos, I didn't tell her I had no photos to share and, happily, competent use of any camera still eludes me.
She seemed suitably impressed that I remembered that when we last met, in Wellington in 1999, a photo had been taken of the event, possibly by her husband.
I have a hard copy of it.
On a trip to the Dunedin library the day after her visit, I thought it only fair I should look further into this Facebook thing.
On my search for relevant material, I became sidetracked. I chatted with two people I hadn't seen for ages and wandered into the magazine section where the cover of The Lady featuring Colin Firth being adoringly gazed at by his wife Livia caught my eye.
Fortunately, neither of the two people I met at the library saw me at this point so I did not have to endure any jibes about the appropriateness of the title. (Readers will not be surprised to know I knew nothing of this magazine, even though it has been around since 1885.)Flicking through a few copies, I found an article about composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth which whetted my appetite for more about her.
With the help of library staff I was able to find one of the books written by the redoubtable Dame in 1934 and bought by the library the following year.
I couldn't wait to get the musty smelling offering home. There was nothing showy about its appearance, but I savoured its plain cover, yellow pages, and even tolerated the sinful pencil underlinings.
And what fun.
Dame Ethel would have been in her 70s at the time Female Pipings in Eden was written.
She writes in a lively, often hilarious way, with many a meander, on subjects as diverse as the discrimination against women composers, recollections of Brahms, her involvement with Emmeline Pankhurst and the perils of succumbing to silly footwear fashion.
She is wonderful on the shortcomings of making decisions based on sentimentality or misplaced feelings of kindness which she describes as often a "mere cloak for moral cowardice".
I brought home Facebook for Dummies too, but confess I have paid it little attention.
I have thought warmly of the library, however, and questioned what seems a petty proposal to save $50,000 a year to change opening hours which might affect about 35,600 people.
We have no way of knowing whether that would mean some people would reduce their library visiting, but that would seem likely when a service is made less accessible.
One of the difficulties for bean counters is that it is not easy to measure the value of anyone using a library.
Those who research serious subjects and go on to great things might be able to place a monetary figure on that, but how does the small but delicious delight I have had from discovering Dame Ethel's book stack up?
In a strange way Ethel's concerns about increasing conformity, for which she wrote "the ownership of the Press by a handful of millionaires is largely to blame" have reinforced my desire to remain a Facebook virgin.
Referring to those pressuring her to make money by selling her house, she suggested it was "a symptom of one of the worst diseases that can befall self-respecting human beings this craze for doing a thing because every one else is doing it".
I may write of these things to my old friend, if only I can remember where I put her address.
Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
