One inarguably good thing about electronic publishing is that it solves that old quandary about what books to pack for your holiday — you just take a tablet or Kindle and buy books on a whim. The downside, however, is that this old dilemma has been replaced by an entirely new one: what bits of electronic crap need you take on holiday and what should be left at home.
One thing you will never see on these pages is a review of headphones. I have owned lots of these over the years, costing between £10 and £150. Unfortunately all of them are completely useless. This is because I am married. I don’t know where this rule appears in the wedding vows, but two seconds after I put on any kind of headset, my wife will appear from nowhere in front of me and start mouthing in a state of agitation. Once I find the pause button, she will ask me one of a series of pointless questions stored up in reserve for moments of spousal headset use: ‘What is the capital of Ecuador?’ or worse, ‘Can you remember the name/age of some random person’s child?’
My solution is to take a portable Bluetooth speaker on holiday instead — speakers being more wife-friendly, somehow. The better, slightly pricier version of these — Bose, Philips, Cambridge Audio, Loewe — are now astonishingly good. But the speaker then creates another problem. Should you now buy yet another plug adapter to charge the damned thing overseas? Actually no.
It took me a decade to realise this, but the answer is to stuff in your suitcase a four, six or eight ‘gang’ extension lead from the UK. (The word ‘gang’ refers to the number of sockets at the end of the lead, and using this word will help you find the item on Amazon, or at least make you seem competent and manly when enquiring in Robert Dyas.)
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