THE DIGITAL DETOX - or - PAVLOV'S IPHONE

I can't be alone in thinking the internet is frying my brain.

More specifically, my iPhone is frying my brain - I am so appallingly addicted to it, I should have it surgically implanted: I can't seem to go more than two or three minutes without checking email, twitter, facebook, linked in, instagram (probably Periscope too, once I've worked out what on earth it's for), or googling some non-essential factoid.

In my darkest moments, I wonder if I've ever been properly productive since I first acquired one of the damn things in 2009. It has given me attention deficit disorder. It's a constant distraction. I've lost the ability to concentrate for long periods. I can't remember things as well as I used to - I don't need to, I can simply ask Mr Google.  I'm an internet bulimic, compulsively binging on vast amounts of McContent.


A brilliant friend of mine, Julia Hobsbawm, imposes 'techno Shabbat' on a Friday night. As one might expect from someone the Evening Standard called 'London's Networking Queen', for someone whose business pretty much requires her to be always on, trying to find a way of marking a division between work and family life requires a formal ritual . I'm not sure I have the discipline for twenty-four hours without the internet, but I do know that I need a digital detox. And, like tackling any addiction or compulsion, I need to put something else in its place to balance its absence.

I want my brain back.

I don't simply want it back, I want it to be as sharp and snappy as it once was. I want to take it to brain bootcamp. There's no point me trying Sudoku or some other spurious brain training thingy, it has to be something I enjoy or I'll relapse to the iPhone instantly. I need the Novel Cure...

There are some compelling studies that suggest reading literary fiction enhance brain connectivity. It's also proven to improve empathy. Perhaps reading more will rewire the damage I've done to my brain, if only I can train myself to read for long stretches of time without getting an attack of FOMO every five minutes and checking the iPhone. I also still have at least two and a half novels to read before The Books That Built Me next Tuesday.

If I had a doctor who could write me a private prescription, I'd take Modafinil (I think that's how one spells it). Modafinil it's a cognitive enhancement psychostimulant drug that sounds the absolute ticket, but it's probably like taking heroin to cure a caffeine addiction, so I'm going to support my efforts with something equally as modern but infinitely more natural. My friend Irina, who owns Purifyne, has given me her new range of juices called the Work Smart Juice Pack, which I'm going to try over the next few days. The juices come with special things to add - for instance, you pop Spirulina, a blue-green algae in a darky leafy vegetable juice to give a brain boosting shot of protein to all the vitamin C and iron to help prevent brain fatigue. It sounds like a much more nutritious espresso.

So, armed with nutritious novels, and juices with which to wash down the words, I'm switching off the internet tonight until tomorrow evening for a digital detox - do look forward to a brighter, shinier me - I feel all the zeal of the convert bubbling inside me, be warned.

TREFUSIS MINOR ON MONARCHY, REPUBLICANISM AND THE ROYAL WEDDING

‘In France, Mummy, they have a President and we have a Queen’  Trefusis Minor said as we were walking down the street earlier today. ‘In France everyone thought it wasn’t fair that you had to be from just one family so a long time ago they cut a lot of people’s heads off and had a vote and now they have a president.’

‘And is that better than having a Queen?’ I ask, thinking Trefusis Minor seems to have a remarkably precocious grasp on current affairs.

‘It goes both ways,’ he says obliquely, ‘It’s not as fair to have a Queen, but it goes both ways’

I’m not entirely sure what he means by this, but I’m interested in where the conversation is heading, particularly since Trefusis Minor has already declared himself against the Royal Wedding – ‘it’s just two people getting married,’ he said earlier this week, with appealing understatement, ‘it’s not that interesting’.

‘We cut a King’s head off and had a republic in this country about a hundred and fifty years before the French got down to it’ I say.

‘Yes, but it didn’t really work. I think they got it a bit wrong – there was no fun, no singing, no sport, you had to go to church all the time, more than once a day*. It was really boring. We’re probably all right with the Queen.’ I do so love the influence of Horrible Histories on seven year olds - is the '1066 and All That' of their generation.

Sadly, the conversation then veered off down a ‘if-you-had-radiation-what-super-power-would-you-get’ cul-de-sac, but whilst Trefusis Minor was telling me I’d probably find it handy to be able to pick things up without having to actually go and get them, I started to think that his laconic ‘we’re probably all right with the Queen’ captured the reason why republicanism finds it so hard to take root in the UK - we're just not bothered enough to change. According to a recent YouGov poll, only 13% of Britons want the monarchy scrapped in favour of an elected president – and even in the emotionally charged wake of Diana’s death, three-quarters of us remained broadly in favour of retaining the monarchy.

Last month, I went to an Editorial Intelligence panel discussion on the Royal Wedding. On the panel were, amongst others, Rachel Johnson, The Evening Standard’s Sarah Sands, YouGov president Peter Kellner and the wonderful civil rights campaigner and republican Peter Tatchell. Tatchell is, by all logical measures, absolutely right when he says that the monarchy is profoundly unfair:

"This is an issue of democracy and human rights. The monarch is our head of state. The monarchical system is anti-Catholic, sexist and, by default, racist. Catholics are barred. For the foreseeable future, no black or Asian person can be our head of state. First-born girls are passed over in favour of younger male children....Our head of state ought to be chosen based on merit and public endorsement, not on the grounds of privileged parentage and inheritance."

Who can disagree? And yet, 66% of us believe that Britain will be still be a monarchy in 100 years time. How can one begin to sum up the general feeling of the nation? There’s an awful lot wrong with the monarchy, but we kind of like it, and we’re deeply suspicious of change? An elected system is also no guarantee of fairness – the great Republics of France and the US haven’t exactly yielded a representative sample of Presidents. As Peter Kellner said at the same debate, ‘For 123 of the last 174 years, we’ve had a female monarch… for how many of the last 174 years has American democracy produced a female president?’

As I drink my cup of tea from the fabulously kitsch Wills ‘n’ Kate mug Mr Trefusis bought me, I think I’m with Trefusis Minor, we're probably all right with the Queen. Unlike Trefusis Minor, I absolutely love a good Royal Wedding.   


*Trefusis Minor's rather jaundiced views on life under the British Commonwealth seem mostly to have been sourced from Horrible Histories...