I admit it – I’m a smartphone addict

I am often extremely dismissive of people immersed in their smartphones. I tut at the mole-ish pedestrians who step out into the traffic, faces uplit and shocked when a car goes by. Last week, in a toddler playgroup, I actually hissed at some poor father. We were in the middle of ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’, with actions, when he got stuck in an iPhone trance. There he stood amid the marching midgets swiping from text messages to email to Twitter and back again. It was when he tapped on the bus times app that I snapped. Well, what a hypocrite I am. And how is it that I’ve only just noticed?

I was on my bike, in sight of Spitalfields Market, when I realised what I’d become. I tell myself that it’s important I check my mail; that it’s grand the way a smartphone lets a mother work even as she’s grilling fish fingers.