Small is rather beautiful. It is also silver, and, so the box tells me, digital. The box, however, also speaks with forked tongue. The box containing my Christmas present, a small and allegedly perfectly- formed camera for all the photographic needs of a new century, winningly states on its side under ''major features'', that it is ''easy to use''. To help the ease with which I should use it along, the box also contains a fat and a thin instruction manual for the core device, an instruction manual for the battery charger, two pretty-coloured leaflets (one for printing functions and one to introduce you to the names of your batteries), a CD- Rom to aid viewing, a CD-Rom to join your camera and your laptop in technological matrimony and a large envelope that is labelled ''important information''. Within the information important enough to have its own carrycase is the address of someone who

will help me with any photographic problems in, among other destinations, Indonesia, Korea and Turkey. Right now I could use someone closer to home. The fat instructional manual opens, somewhat dauntingly, with four pages of cautions and warnings. Included is an injunction not to put the camera strap around the neck of an infant. This is, however, an unlikely hazard, since, despite a pictorial step-by-step guide, I appear unable even to put the accessory in question around the neck of the camera. This does not bode well for the larger challenges ahead in pages one to 92 inclusive. They begin by offering a series of symbols: ''icons to make it easier to find the information you need''. These icons will doubtless prove invaluable - right after I get back from the optician's with upgraded reading glasses. There follow pages devoted to highlighting the camera parts. For a very small object,

there appears to be a very large number of the latter, including such snap-happy features as an interface connector cover, a USB 46/video-out 44 connector and a DC-in connector. Boy, am I ever going to be well-connected.

Am I ever going to be able to take a photo? Not, it seems, without understanding the sacred secrets of the camera's monitor. They are listed in detail: the zoom indicator, focus indicator, recording indicator, self timer indicator, date imprint indicator and so, confusingly, on, not forgetting the sensitivity gain indicator. Listen up here: I'll settle for a comprehension gain indicator. Sadly, this will have to wait until I can activate what we in the white-hot-heated technology lobby like to call the go switch. I know what you're thinking. You think I can't find it. Wrong. Even this lady can read something which says on/off, though admittedly not without her glasses. The trouble is, as the green auxiliary leaflet reveals, the batteries will not play ball until they've been charged. Happily, a battery charger lurks in that damned box. As does its connector cables.

These lie among a nest of cabling topped and tailed in different fashions which would do credit to Beagle 2 base command. Happily, there is a visual clue. Only one set has a three- pin plug on the end. I am very happy to see this three-pin plug. This three- pin plug is, thus far, the only thing in the box with which I have had any previous relationship - be it intimate or otherwise. And in a mere two-

and-a-half hours, the batteries (as detailed in the yellow auxiliary leaflet) are charged as per the battery charging manual. (Silver and white.) The green light on the camera is on! On swiftly to the nursery slopes: understanding your mode dial. Turned to Set Up, the monitor promptly offers a choice of languages for what follows. Oddly these do not appear to include Greek, since much of the rest of the manual seems to favour it. By now my own mode has changed from happy anticipation to terminal frustration. What do we want? To take a picture. When do we want it? Now. But hold hard, we have still to insert a memory card.

Now it is true that this is a device after which I have long yearned in a purely personal capacity. A card which aids retrieval of memory

at will can surely only benefit humankind d'un certain age. In this instance, however, the small square chip thing has to go into the mother ship's terminal first, which will

surely be a breeze just as soon as I

relocate the pages revealing the site of its very own slot cover. One of the more ubiquitous features of the 21st- century camera is to be so style conscious as to hide any casual observance of its innards. Or give any clue whatsoever to their approximate whereabouts.

This exercise, which was begun before breakfast, is now approaching lunchtime, and we are due at our Christmas lunch party in a couple of hours at a location a couple of hours away. The box and all but one of its manuals are returned to the tree, and the camera and the ''quick start guide'' put in the overnight bag. This will almost certainly prove one of the more spectacular misnomers.

Yet lo, assistance is near. When we get to the party we are greeted with two extremely welcome sights: the host pouring the first of what turned out to be serial aperitifs, and four of his extended family brandishing digital cameras - one of whom is a proper grown-up, full-time cameraman. Into the latter's hand I thrust the new toy and with several deft and baffling strokes he has it ready for the off. I CAN NOW TAKE A PICTURE!

Curiously, despite the many sophisticated control buttons that are available to pose, crop, zoom and edit, plus a choice of settings for all manner of light, from daylight through incandescent and fluorescent to cloudy, it seems I have cut the heads off partygoers. Mode incandescent! Yet this is when I finally get some good news. You can delete your mistakes. No more trundling back from the chemist with just three usable snaps out of a possible 36 - just gaze with horror on your latest gaffe and then zap it. Which is why, many hours of party pix later, I woke up and found, well, three remaining images among the undeleted. Technology, it appears, does not improve the strike rate.

This little box of tricks can apparently do so very much more to make me technophobe of the year. Videos, silent movies, TV movies and the like. Hand in glove with my computer it could most probably fix the dishwasher and get the trains to run on time. But, in truth, I cast the manual (s) aside after finding an ally who could put these mischief-prone megapixels in their place. Auto, my new best friend, belongs to the modes tribe. He is ''a simple point and shoot mode in which the majority of camera settings are controlled by the camera''. Frankly, chaps,

that is exactly the kind of information you should be putting on the side of the box.