I wish I’d stayed at Playful on Friday for James Bridle’s talk, A new theory of awesomeness and miracles. Unfortunately a splitting headache sent me home.

That might have been for the best. If I had stayed, I would have probably melted into an unseemly puddle of nostalgia and pity for my younger geek self.

I have a non-24 hour sleep cycle – which means, in those days before the internet, I used to watch an awful lot of overnight TV.

There wasn’t the ‘play roulette, on the telly, for £4/min, especially if you’re drunk’ crap that’s on now. Nor the slop bucket of simulcast 24 news. But there was the Open University. And, with only four channels, most of them off-air, you had no choice what to watch. It was surpassing brilliant.

It was the only way I could indulge my true geek – we used to call them ’spods’ and they were hated, picked on, teased. By me too. How shameful.

Anyway, I remember clearly an OU programme about the Matchbox Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine: MENACE. An ingenious learning device made out of matchboxes and marbles. And I spent weeks, at night, making one and teaching it to play. I’d forgotten all about it until reading James’ talk – he has some great pictures of his version.

The thing is, I did all this in secret. I knew my non-geek friends wouldn’t understand. While by day I pretended that I really enjoyed reading dreadful angsty poetry.

Keeping these two identities separate was, I think, a major contributor to the teenage breakdown I had a bit later. I’m sure I had friends who were also secret geeks, but we never let on to each other.

Anyway, isn’t the internet brilliant? I think the mainstream sometimes misses that there are teens now much less tortured – by themselves and others – because they can find these circles of interest online. This is an enormously good thing, and I wish lawmakers and commentators would cherish it more.

Go enjoy James’ talk. It’s indeed awesome. I’m off to read some dreadful angsty poetry, in secret.