Normal Service will be Resumed

This year I decided to emulate the great Frankie Valley, who disappeared from our computer screens for two whole weeks while on holiday with his family back in August. I have just returned to Madrid after my customary couple of weeks in Scotland, with a weekend in England thrown in, and as I was visiting an old friend who is not into computers, so very much not into them that he doesn't even possess one, I decided that a holiday should be precisely that: a complete break from routine. Routine in my case, here in Madrid, as the title of the blog indicates, involves a lot of hours online, particularly at night when all is silent.

My Big Decision was prompted by my mobile phone. I only recently acquired one of these, as living alone I never need to ring the house to say I'll be late back, or tell people about any train I might happen to be on, or anything. But pressure from my friends, who are keen that we should all have the facility to adapt social arrangements on the fly, linked to my recent trip to Barcelona, finally pushed me into doing something that I had actually meant to do for ages, and I took the plunge.

Once I had the thing, it occurred to me that it might be useful in Britain as well, and so it was, in a limited way, as mobile phoning when outside your contractual country doesn't come cheap (well it doesn't come cheap at all, come to that). But what did amaze me was that, about ten minutes after I logged on to the UK version of my Spanish provider, which I did while waiting for the train down to Ayr about 45 minutes after landing at Glasgow Airport, the phone vibrated in my pocket, signalling a text message. This came from the said Spanish providers (I'm not doing any free advertising), and said that if I texted a number to them, or maybe dialled it, can't recall, I would thenceforth be able to ring my Spanish contacts at the normal rate.

At first I thought this was great, but on reflection I realised that I didn't want to do this at all. The whole point about a holiday is being in a different world, so much though I love my friends in Madrid, I had no intention of ringing them for a chat, and by the same token, I decided, I could also try to avoid computers as much as I could, except maybe the odd quick trip to the library to check emails, every three or four days. And so it turned out.

However, Charlton have been in action, albeit not very profitably, and the quiz season has begun, and I have experienced life under a total smoking ban, all of which have given me things to write about, but with the start of our full term just two days off, it might take time. But as it says up top, normal service will be resumed, as soon as I can get round to it.