A radical change in the relative value of everyday things

It was a man in my club who first enthused to me about the special attractions of Skype. Given the normal boundaries of clubland conversation, this might suggest to those unfamiliar with the name that Skype is either a shooting estate in the Highlands or a dominatrix in Bayswater. But mine is an enlightened sort of club, providing a ‘business room’ equipped with modern technology, and what the member in question was so excited about was the fact that he had just made a free phone call to South Africa through a head-set connected to his laptop.