Winter walks and smartphones

I’ve long held out against smartphones as the last thing I want is to be contactable at any time. I like going for long walks and getting away from it all. I like doing one thing at a time. I like feeling in charge of my own life. I prefer emailing to texting because I can do it on my full-size keyboard at home and take time to think before answering. Why would I want to pay £20 a month when at the moment I pay about £20 a year? Why use up more of the earth's resources by replacing something that still works?

Recently however I’ve begun to worry that I’m getting so far behind with technology that I’ll never catch up. Everybody else communicates by text and my fingertips are cracked from pounding the numbers on my ancient phone as I answer them. A friend has suggested listening to audio books at night when I can’t sleep and that I could do this on a smartphone.

So, last week I took the plunge and got one. Most of it I hate and find far more difficult than my old phone. For example, it’s ten stages to dial 999 whereas it was two before. Friends assure me that I’ll soon sail through, but my list of questions gets longer and longer. To my surprise, however, I’ve taken to the camera.

I’ve been using it over the last three days on my walks and here are the results – to begin with, in my opinion, a bit iffy but getting better by the third day! 

I should probably be doing this on Instagram . . . I'll let you know if and when.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday