Phones that ....light your cigarette afterwards.

Great news for those who are struggling to save up for the latest ipad, Wii thing or Shoot You Really Dead computer game for their three year olds.

Hang on five minutes and they won’t want it any more. The one thing I find comforting about today’s technology is that it advances quicker than I can write about it. By the time I put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking obviously; even I’m not that much of a Luddite), it’s no longer an issue.

By the time the kids get to Game Station on January 5^th with their Christmas vouchers, the Bloody War thing you didn’t want them to have has been consigned to the charity shops where you can get it for 50p if you’re that uncool. Which they’re not, of course. Crisis averted.

Technology today moves so fast that the revolutionary iphone 4 is already a bit passé, long before most people have finished saving up for one.

The next thing that will ‘absolutely transform the way you live’ makes the original, old-fashioned iphone look like a Neanderthal brick. Facebook on your phone? Old hat. This next generation will replace your credit cards, get you on the Tube and open your front door.

You think I’m joking. Apparently a tiny chip will be integrated into SIM cards issued by mobile networks and – wait for it - can be added to your existing phone. These providers will be able to lease space on the chip to other businesses like banks, travel agents or supermarkets.

Suddenly writing ‘Bit tired’ on your Facebook status while walking upstairs doesn’t seem quite so Bladerunner.

You’ll be able to sell blue chip shares or buy frozen chips at the local shop just by scanning your phone.

Fantastic.  Can’t wait. But guess what? It’s taken me three weeks from receiving the press release about all this to get it online as ‘an area cable has become unplugged’.

The washing machine leaks and has decided it only washes at 30°. And I still can’t change the integral light bulb in my ceiling fan so my conservatory is only useful during daylight hours.

The farm shop down the road where I get my veg hasn’t even begun to accept cheques yet and they’ve almost been abolished.

I don’t want to piss on anyone’s parade, but maybe if we stuck with things for more than a few minutes, we might actually make them work properly before we bin them and move on to the next exciting development.

Hammering home the point........

The other day I was racing from work to school, when my journey was suddenly ended by a car a hundred yards in front of me which span out of control, flipped onto its roof and smacked into a tree.

In the blink of an eye the narrow winding lane was filled with ambulances, police cars and fire engines. The woman driving the car had to be cut free.  Her bags lay ignored on the tarmac where they were flung as she crashed. The road was shut for hours.

I found myself wandering up and down the gathering line of traffic waving my useless mobile at the clouds trying to get a signal (Cuban rainforest? Sure. Sussex? No).

I was furious that once again, through no fault of my own, I’d be late to pick up my daughter from school.  She would then miss her next appointment, the other daughter would be on her own for three hours instead of two, the slow-cooking dinner would be burnt, there would be no time to feed either of them before the oldest had to go out again and I’d have to walk the dog in the dark. There were four people who were expecting me within the next few minutes and I had no way of getting to them or even telling them why I wasn’t there.

I was huffing and puffing and stomping up and down for a good fifteen minutes before a sideways look from one of the other people stuck in the jam stopped me dead in my tracks.

What on earth has happened to me? The woman driving the car had to be cut free.  And I was thinking, ‘how inconvenient’.

My ridiculous timetable has got to change. I was shocked at how completely I’d lost sight of what is really important. I barely acknowledged that in front of me was a human being whose life had literally just been turned upside down – she could have been dying for all I knew - and all I could think was ‘how quickly can you clear the traffic?’

As regular readers know, I am always late for everything. And not because I’m sat at home watching the end of Loose Women. Not even because I’m at the gym or visiting the old and infirm, which would at least make me healthy in body and mind.

I always plan to go to a meditation class nearby and every week I phone the lovely lady who leads it and tell her I don’t have time.  She tells me that if I wanted to have time, I would have.

A friend of mine, who also has two children, always does whatever she wants and if that means her kids can’t do something, bad luck. I threatened my children the other day, when they moaned about me being grumpy, that if they didn’t start helping out, I was going to start behaving just like (let’s call her) Molly.

‘She’s always happy, she’s fit, she’s great at all her hobbies, everyone thinks she’s really cool – because she does exactly what she likes no matter how much it stuffs up everyone else’s plans.’  I bellowed.

‘She’s not exhausted and wrinkly and baggy eyed with no decent clothes – and what thanks do I get? (Oh sweet mother of God, I’m boring myself now).

‘If you’re not careful I’m going to become just like her,’ I threatened.

‘You should,’ they answered, unperturbed, without even wobbling their cart -surfing Penguin. ‘You do far too much.’

So that’s my children, my friends, my mother and – no doubt, had she had the chance to comment - the poor lady in the overturned car, who all agree that I’ve got the work-life balance a bit ass-about-face.

Brace yourselves. Things are about to change around here..............