Time-travel

Phone dependence. I guess we are all aware of how vulnerable we have made ourselves, both personally and as a society, on the combination of the mobile Internet and the screen in our pocket. But some days drive it home to you

We parked in town. The payment machine, irascible at the best of times, had checked out completely. A sticker on the side said pay by phone (app) - it costs more, but tough. We walked along the canal for lunch. The cafe said we can order at the bar if we want, but made it pretty clear they prefer orders via the internet, so we played along. Tap to say no chorizo; tap to add a tip (with the order, based on you premonition of the service quality)

Our daughter & s-i-l lived on a boat like this for 5 years, always moving. The well-meaning, but ultimately exasperating, question everyone asks: "Is it cold in winter?" That plume of smoke that made the picture worth taking, is nothing to do with motive power; it's the chimney of the coal stove in the living space. The smallest stove you can get throws about 4kW of heat (two standard convector heaters on full power) into a space so confined that our daughter declared nothing deserves space on the boat unless it has a minimum of three purposes. You learn quickly how to manage a fire and never to run out of coal, and to open the door when it gets too hot

Internet access in the sort of remote places canals go to can be a problem though. It can be inconvenient, but it's good it makes you think about dependence

In town, MrsM and I co-ordinated our separate errands and meeting up again by text messages; of course we did, that's the way everyone lives now. But it's not the way we lived for maybe 50 years of our lives; 20 years of marriage. We have changed so easily, so painlessly, into that reliance

By a strange set of co-incidences, we found ourselves in a bank where we have never been a customer, but where we turn out to have two different acounts that we did not know existed. It's a slightly spooky experience. A bit of deduction and assumption took our minds back to a time when there were pass books and cheque books and forms in duplicate. And no pocket screens and no Internet. So recent, so far away. But all that has gone, and 2008 was a near miss, and takeover followed take over. And a little bit of our money found it's way to a quiet bank in quiet Banbury, two weeks before Xmas. MrsM signed some screens (in duplicate!) and tomorrow it will be on the screens in our pocket. All being well