Urgle. No idea where the last week went, apart from the bit that I spent in West Sussex, isolated from the pernicious influences of the internet and all that sparkles therein. This made me realise, once again, how much time I spend pratting about online when I should be getting on with the things I constantly moan about not having time for. Gods, what a sentence. I spent evenings reading (three entire books knocked off in the space of five days, which is pretty good going, even by my speed-reading standards) and knitting, with the result that I’ve finished the back and half of the front of a cardigan for the tiny daughter, and I’ve decided to keep up this rather lower-profile internet useage. For one thing, it makes me value the time I do spend online, rather than just obsessively hitting ‘refresh’ on my feed reader, and it also means that we’re back to spending evenings DOING THINGS together, rather than slumped in front of some film or other, courtesy of various websites. It’s funny – when we got rid of our telly, both Quercus and I felt good about it, not least as we’d hardly watched it for months. But then, when I’m tired and not getting much sleep, I seem to gravitate towards the internet in much the same way that I would have used television in days gone by – not activity, as such, but a sort of real-life-is-paused thing that lets you off the hook of living. Well, enough, says I. I reclaim the time I spend reading Go Fug Yourself (which is mostly about people I’ve never heard of, anyway), and I claw back the hours lost to Facebook and Twitter (which has never really caught me in the way it has others, but which is still handy for procrastination purposes), and I brandish knitting needles and crafty bits and bobs, and I depart the parish to prepare bits of card for the tiny daughter and I to attempt to transform into an advent calendar later on. (And no, I have not turned to the church for comfort in my hour of need, but I do like to celebrate seasonal whatsits, and the notion of advent calendars thus appeals to my generally-ridiculously-excited affection for midwinter.)

I hasten to add that I don’t consider this blog, nor my reading of other people’s blogs and the commenting thereon, to be part of my problematic nonsense time online; genuine interaction I value very highly, but pratting about on sites in which I’m not even really interested, simply because I can’t be arsed to get off my backside and get on with things, despite feeling shitty about not doing so, is just not on. So there. Also, I am determined that the tiny daughter shan’t be exposed to the internet to the extent that it becomes part of the background noise that other people experience as the constantly-on television; the last thing I want is for her to feel that she’s not interesting enough to be put before the compulsive checking of email. So, it’s back to basics: no iBook if she’s awake, apart from the odd phone number-checking moment, or things of that ilk.

Right. As you were. And coming soon: oak kitchens, the building thereof; multicoloured tiles, the drooling over thereof; chocolate fudge, the vast consumption thereof; and many more such nonsensical things, as the fancy taketh me.

How are you all?