Logging - Nick Spalding Page 0,82

of good. I do feel healthier, and I have found lots of things to keep me occupied without being online. The day out in Bath was a great deal of fun – as are all the walks in the country.

So what if I’m not also talking about the bad aspects? These fine people don’t need to know that I still crave my social media every single day, or that I find a great deal of my life to be dreadfully inconvenient without technology.

And they definitely don’t need to know that the only reason I agreed to speak to them in the first place was because I’ve developed feelings for someone who may – or may not – feel the same about me.

And there’s no way in hell I’m telling them that I have every intention of going back online first thing tomorrow morning.

Those smiles would probably drop off their faces at the speed of light if they knew just how much I still want to be online. That for all the good the detox has done me, it’s also left me out in the wilderness.

These people clearly want – and even need – to go down the same path that I have taken. And they want to hear that the path is an easy one to traverse once you’re on it.

From what I can gather from this evening’s conversation, they all suffer greatly in one way or another from too much time spent online – whether it be Internet shopping, or on social media, or playing online video games, or falling down the YouTube rabbit hole.

All of them have rather gaunt looks on their faces that only lift when I tell them my next white lie about how wonderful my life is, now I’m free of the shackles of the Internet.

And who am I to tell them the path is hard? That it comes with a lot of pitfalls?

I’m self-aware (duck) enough to know that I’m the kind of person who naturally gravitates towards pitfalls at every available opportunity. Perhaps for these fine folks things will be easier. I certainly don’t want to put them off, just because I’m an accident-prone wally. I very much doubt they’d encounter the same duck-pond- and toilet-window-related disasters I did!

This is exactly the same mentality I had when I first talked to Grace about the detox – and that seemed to work out well for both me and her, so it stands to reason it’s the right way of handling things now as well.

So, tonight I am Mr Positive, and my audience clearly loves me for it.

From the back of the room, I spy a hand go up, and my heart sinks. I have been avoiding looking at the owner of that hand all night. I have done this because the owner of the hand has trouble written all over him. He is a young man of a slight build and a rather pinched expression.

I am going to describe what this young man is dressed in, and I’m interested in what your reaction will be. I know we’re not supposed to judge people by the way they dress themselves in this enlightened day and age, but in this case, I hope you’ll agree it’s impossible not to.

The young man wears a bobble hat upon his head. The bobble hat has the Star Trek logo on it. Underneath the hat I see curly brown, and rather unkempt, hair. The young man wears glasses. Thick-rimmed and round, they create a magnification effect on his eyes that is visible even from across the café. The eyes themselves are permanently fixed in narrow slits of suspicion. The poor chap has a problem with acne that a month spent in a bath of heavy-duty spot cream probably couldn’t solve.

Upon his person he wears a cagoule. The top half is bright blue, the bottom half is bright red.

Yes. Those are brown corduroy trousers.

No, I don’t know why a fully grown man in 2019 would be wearing green Crocs and yellow socks either.

Now . . . what do you reckon?

Am I being entirely unfair in not wanting to draw this young man’s attention all night? Or do you think that I might have a point?

We’re about to find out, as he’s the only one with his hand up now. Everyone else appears to be satisfied and happy with what I’ve had to say tonight, but this cagoule-wearing chap has more he wants to know and there’s not a damn thing I