Logging - Nick Spalding Page 0,24

turns out.’

I sit back with my arms folded. ‘Well, you’re not going to, because I’m not going through with it.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Nope. Fuck it. As soon as we leave here, I’m going home and getting everything out of the box again.’

I arrived at this decision about halfway through telling Fergus about what’s been happening to me over the past few days.

I don’t care how much my jaw hurts, or how tight my neck feels; I cannot and will not go through the next sixty days in the kind of foul mood I am currently in. That horrid feeling of disconnection is just too much.

I will try my level best not to go online as much, but there’s no way I’m cutting it out of my life completely. I just can’t do it. I don’t want to spend the next two months angry, frustrated, antsy and twitchy.

‘Antsy and twitchy mean the same thing,’ Fergus tells me.

‘Oh, bugger off.’

‘So, that’s it then? You’re just going to give up?’

‘Yes! Yes I am.’

‘Why?’

I shake my head and look at him in disgust. ‘What do you mean, why? I told you why! It’s too hard!’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because . . . because . . .’ I look around at the people on their phones. ‘Because I can’t do what they’re doing!’

Fergus also looks at them. ‘And what are they doing?’

‘Having fun!’

He raises one eyebrow. ‘They don’t look like they’re having that much fun to me. Those two girls in the corner could be talking to one another, but instead they’re hunched over their phones. That old boy in the other corner is clearly having problems trying to get his stupid phone to work in the first place, and matey-boy on the iPad there might be smiling, but there’s a haunted look in his eyes that speaks volumes.’

I grunt. ‘Stop being melodramatic.’

Fergus chuckles. ‘You nearly bashed your front door off its hinges because you can’t go on Twitter, and I’m the one being melodramatic?’

‘It’s not just that!’

‘Of course it’s just that. You yourself said you can still use the Internet for work. It’s still there for everything that’s necessary in your life. So, what’s your bloody problem? You don’t need the Internet. You don’t need social media. You got on fine without it before it existed, so why can’t you cope without it now . . . especially just for sixty days?’

‘I . . . I don’t know!’ I snap, clenching my fists.

‘No, my friend. You don’t. And you never will unless you go through with it, will you?’

‘I guess . . . I guess not.’

What the hell is going on here?

I was adamant that I wasn’t going to carry on with this stupid detox, but here I am agreeing with Fergus.

It’s because the bastard is making a very good point.

Am I really so weak-willed that I can’t go even a day without my phone in my hand? Without checking what the latest hashtags are? Am I that pathetic?

You see? He’s like a bloody can opener.

And I’m about to spill my guts.

‘I know I probably need to do this, Fergus. It just feels . . . feels so difficult. Almost impossible. Yes, I know I’m addicted, but I don’t know if I have the strength to go without it all.’

‘Right. So, you’re not worried so much about not being on Facebook. You’re just worried you’ll fail.’

I blink a couple of times. ‘Yes. That’s it. I don’t want to fail.’

‘So it’s easier to not try?’

I blink again.

How is this man not a psychologist?

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘You’ll live with the pain and discomfort, just because you can cope with them better than the idea that you failed at something.’

‘Oh, all right. Give it a bloody rest. I feel like I should be laid out on a couch.’ I stare at him. ‘How does a ginger twat like you know so much about this kind of thing?’

‘Because this ginger twat used to drink two bottles of red wine a night.’

‘Is that why you’re so ginger?’

‘Yes.’

I laugh and rub my face. ‘Oh, God almighty. What am I going to do?’

‘Sixty days without technology. That’s what you’re going to do.’ Fergus also smiles. ‘And this ginger twat is going to help you do it.’

‘Really? How?’

‘I’m going to write a story about you for the paper.’

‘No you’re bloody not.’

‘Yes I bloody am.’

‘No, Fergus. You really bloody are not. I do not have an amusingly shaped marrow anywhere about my person.’

Fergus steeples his fingers in front of him, sinking down into the Costa chair a little more.