Last week I switched off my phone at 8.30pm and read a best-seller about a child psychologist who hadn’t left her house in 10 months (and this without any major aid from her smartphone). My precious device lay right in front of me, motionless, unblinking yet so easily resuscitated, and my fingers itched to bring it back to life. I couldn’t abandon it callously in another room, that favourite tip of people who still read seriously in the Digital Age. And I must confess I had to soothe the dryness of my throat with deep gulps of Old Monk but, for once, the book won.
Apparently, I’m addicted to my smartphone. Or so says the husband, who has now patented his own perfect evil stare and uses it every time I pick up my phone.
It doesn’t matter that he has liked or commented on every common friend’s Facebook post before I have; that he tweets more than me (his tweeting is work-related, you see); that I caught him carrying his phone to the loo (so that he doesn’t pick it up in front of me, apparently); that it’s okay for him to watch YouTube videos before he sleeps (that’s different); or that we have 23 WhatsApp groups in common and he is invariably quicker on the draw than I.
