A VERY old piece for Voyager - BMI’s in-flight mag. I loved their covers, and this issue was my favourite. Giant picture of Vivienne Westwood.
Back when I started out in old fashioned print journalism, my propensity to stalk people online (locating all their various blogs, and hunting down their aliases) was a freakish quality I tried to keep hidden. Now, having made a career out of being able to track down the right bloggers, I trumpet my slightly sinister abilities as though being a virtual curtain twitcher were something to be proud of.
This week I have been having a major spring clean (you know the sort where in order to tidy up you first need to empty out all your cupboards onto the floor until you’re wading in a pile of forgotten belongings) and I finally forced myself to do something with the huge box of old gadgets that has been sitting in my bedroom for years, gathering guilt.
"I’ve known for a while, of course, but I’ve just been suppressing the truth. Now it’s time to come clean and admit it: the internet is stealing my life. It’s not just that I’m an addict (Hi, my name is Katie and I’m a weboholic) it’s also that the more time I spend reading about all the wonderful things the internet can do, the more time I spend on the internet trying to get those wonderful things to work."
— Time thieves: productivity tools are stealing my life – Telegraph Blogs
Talking about death
It was the third anniversary of my dad’s death the other day. This is the email I sent to friends to help them not to act weird around me.
Hi all
Just wanted to say thanks for all the messages from everyone when my dad died last week. Sorry for the radio silence — I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown or anything, don’t worry! I was safely ensconced in the family bubble with three of my siblings and my mother.
In case you’re all worrying about how to behave around me ([friend’s name] is right that westerners are crap at death!), please don’t feel you have to avoid talking about it, use vague euphemisms for the word “dead” or start throwing around those “bereavement” or “condolence” type words.
You really shouldn’t feel that you need to be careful around me. I’m happy to talk about it — it’s not like we didn’t all joke about how clapped out he was, and the Lee family has had plenty of time (ie my entire adult life) to develop a fairly dark sense of humour about dad’s dodgy health. It was our way of coping, and that hasn’t changed now he’s finally decided to cark it a couple of months before my wedding (bloody typical) and 13 years after he was supposed to.
Obviously, I’m very sad that my dad has died: I loved him very much and thought he was a pretty wonderful man. The whole experience was awful, strange (what with Monday rising from the dead episode) and quite numbing, but I don’t have a problem with answering questions, and I’m intending to save any serious wailing and gnashing of teeth for the funeral on Monday, so don’t worry about that. I’m not made of glass, you won’t break me if you bring it up, and ignoring it is just plain weird.
If you catch me welling up, it’s ok — these things happen.
"Ever hanker for the days when mobile phone batteries lasted all week and calls were never randomly dropped because your phone suddenly suffered a nervous collapse?"
—
Casio, Nokia, HP, Classic gadgets worth buying The best retro gadgets you can still buy.
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