Smartphones

I’m a hopeless technophobe. I dislike the stylish laptop I’m using and its subdued pad pad pad. I still long for the clatter and ting of my old typewriter. It was a sturdy soul, utterly obedient, only needing a new ribbon occasionally. It lived for 40 years before being interred in a quiet corner of my attic. I’ve had several computers since and they have all been tricksy. I often fantasise about tracking down another ancient typewriter that could be coaxed back into service. There are still several writers determinedly tapping away. The American novelist Danielle Steel has achieved a billion sales by working on a 1946 typewriter. Jilly Cooper

I’m autistic, I teach autistic children and I care for autistic adults, but I never kid myself that we are better than other people. When I asked a fellow autistic man if he could name any famous autistic people, he replied: ‘Hitler and Einstein.’ I love his answer because it punctures the romanticism around autism. There are evil autistic people, as well as geniuses. Was Hitler autistic? We’ll never know for sure, but he showed several symptoms. People who met him found that once he started talking, he would not stop. He was also nocturnal, had an addictive personality and developed lifelong obsessions (in his case, racial purity). Around half

Before he became Prime Minister, Keir Starmer admitted he was concerned about what life in Downing Street might be like for his children. It was, he said, the ‘single thing’ that kept him awake at night. What’s notable is that we aren’t even aware of Starmer’s children’s names. They are teenagers but that’s about all we know about them. They were not photographed when Starmer and his wife Victoria entered No. 10, nor have they been seen since. ‘We do try to protect them… we don’t use photos of them in any way,’ Starmer said. There seem to be no pictures in the public domain of Starmer with his children.

I am not often lost for words, but the five middle-aged homeless men who spoke at the Big Issue celebration in the House of Lords last month left me truly awestruck. All five had endured lives of childhood abandonment, violence, pain, destitution. All five had emerged from the darkness philosophical, hopeful and loving of their fellow man. I have not stopped thinking about them, and when I start on my usual daily beefs – signs on the Tube telling me I mustn’t give money to beggars (why not if I want to?); signs on the Tube telling me I can’t stare at people (what if someone is listening to a deafening

The online PE teacher Joe Wicks has announced, in a fit of self-reproach coinciding with the launch of his new television programme, that he considers himself addicted to his smartphone. He says he forced himself to take a whole five days off social media in order to be more ‘present’ for his children, and that doing so ‘opened my eyes to just how much I struggle with it on a daily basis’. ‘I justify the use of my phone for work,’ he said in a post on Instagram (I won’t labour the irony, but he really did deliver this revelation in a post on Instagram), ‘but in reality I’m probably

‘My phone says I can’t go out until Tuesday, so I can’t come and meet you,’ said my friend. And she repeated this down the line several times, as I insisted I did not understand. I had nipped outside the hairdresser with my hair in highlighter foils to take her call and was standing on the street, phone tucked under the silver-paper flaps, a stiff wind blowing. I assumed she must be saying something else and I had misheard. ‘It’s the app on my phone,’ she explained. ‘I’ve counted the days myself and I should be able to go out today, but my phone says I have to stay in

David Niven’s younger son Jamie, now an old man and a bit overweight, approached my table and announced that he had seen a video of me lunching elsewhere with two friends. He said this in front of the two ladies I was with, one of whom has in the past had issues with my behaviour — namely, the wife. Luckily the video showed me with the designer Carolina Herrera and her husband, who are social friends, so after a pregnant pause Jamie Niven said goodbye and left. It was the end of the story and for once I was doing something innocent, like having lunch. Thinking back, however, I am

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

The Spectator podcast: Listen to Isabel Hardman, Lara Prendergast, Charlotte Jee, Editor of Techworld, and Professor Martin Conway, head of psychology at City University discuss the memory gap. Ask me what I had for lunch yesterday and I couldn’t tell you. Names disappear as swiftly as smoke. Birthdays, capital cities, phone numbers — the types of facts that used to come so readily — are no longer forthcoming. I’m 26, yet I feel I have the memory of a 70-year-old. My brain is a port through which details pass, but don’t stay. I’m not alone. Many young people feel our memories have been shot to pieces. It’s the embarrassing secret of my

I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There are plenty of things in life — films, plays, social events — which I can only fully enjoy knowing I can make a sharp exit at any time. It’s not that I leave: I just like to know I can. My idea of hell is a party on a boat. So I am rather enamoured with the new mobile-phone app Qkr, which lets you pay with your phone in some restaurants without waiting for the bill. It’s the honest man’s version of ‘doing a runner’. You check in on your

On the way home from dinner with girlfriends I composed my usual thank-you text. Smashing company, delicious food, must see you all again. A couple of kisses. Feeling this wasn’t enough, I added a line of coloured pictures: an ice cream in a cone, a slice of cake with a strawberry on top, a bar of chocolate, a cup of steaming coffee — near enough representations of the puddings we had shared. The replies came back: smiley faces, rows of hearts, bowls of spaghetti (it had been an Italian), martini glasses. My friends and I are in our late twenties and early thirties, yet we communicate using emoji: the sort

When I told my friends that I was planning to attend a silent retreat, they all laughed. It’s true that I am something of a convivialist; my idea of heaven is a big table in a warm restaurant, the table shimmering with the laughter of friends and the glugging of wine, and me picking up the bill. On the other hand, I was a solitary only child and I look back on those days with great fondness. Before the long stagger up the primrose path of pleasure started, the only companion I needed was a book; I well remember my mother crying because I preferred to sit in my room

I wouldn’t worry much about the future of the British economy. Because I have a simple plan to make the UK the world’s leading exporter of mobile phones. They will be manufactured by a new consortium including Alfred Dunhill, Cordings and Bowers & Wilkins. The idea came to me when I was watching coverage of the new scandal in France, where a government security officer was photographed at 8 a.m. delivering a bag of croissants to Hollande’s love nest. My first reaction was disgust — I mean, how bad must things be in a country when even the president can’t get a cooked breakfast? But his behaviour also made me