The iPhone’s 3G is off, the Wi-Fi is shut down and my flamboyantly sadistic 19-year-old son has taken custody of my iPad for the next week. Out comes the network cable and I draft an automatic reply for email messages. As the witching hour approaches, I bid farewell to my 200,000-odd followers on Twitter: “Internet addiction check-up. Off-line for a week from tomorrow. Be in touch”.
The first, less than encouraging, responses are include: “All the best! I reckon it’d be easier to give up smoking.” “I give you two days, tops.” “Keep some methadone handy. You never know”. “I lasted 26 minutes, long enough to go on to Facebook and tell everyone I couldn’t do it”.
Day one. I wake up and instead of checking my mail and glancing at the news online, I look at photos from a recent trip to Tamil Nadu. The main thing – as I tell my nearest and dearest – is to ignore the iPad making eyes at me from the kitchen table. The family smiles in sympathy. Daddy’s got a difficult week ahead. Don’t rub him up the wrong way.