Once upon a time, when you went on holiday, you were pretty much gone.
Once your loved ones had waved you goodbye, your lurid Bermuda shorts disappearing over the horizon, that would be the last they'd hear until you tuned up two weeks later clutching a large toy donkey and a bag full of duty free.
Of course, you might send them a postcard. But since getting a postcard to arrive on time demands the same clear-minded organization required to instigate a small revolution, the chances are you won't have managed it with any degree of success.
There have always been strict rules for postcard sending. First you've got to agonise over the picture most suitable for the recipient (blue sky, white sands and historical ruin for mum? Local man gurning while riding a goat for Auntie Mabel?)
Then you must write them at the perfect location, allowing maximum smugness: "Lying in hammock by sea, sipping cocktails", for example, is always a favourite, while "spending 13th hour atop sweaty, incontinent camel" is unlikely to provoke very much envy.
Next you'll leave them in your bag for the rest of the week until you remember to buy some stamps. And then you'll have to locate the post office, which you'll generally find on your way back to the airport. It's all part of the fun. Honest.
Of course you might have tried to cut to the chase and call home but this used to be equally fraught with difficulty. Finding the optimum moment - where the correct change, a working phone and the appropriate dialling codes were all present and correct - would usually only occur when it was 5am in the UK.
Strangely, I seem to have a wistful nostalgia for these incommunicado days, when we weren't instantly available to each other.
These days there is nowhere in the world you can go where you won't find an internet caf. If you are in China, people can text you as easily as if you were sat on your sofa, and you them.
And how is it possible to get away from it all when your mobile is constantly beeping with the sound of gossip from back home?
A friend of mine is in India at the moment but due to instant messenger and increased internet access I have spoken to her almost every other day. Not only can it be quite disconcerting to return from Tesco to hear that she has just visited the Taj Mahal, but its seems a bit weird that she is so far away but so very accessible. I love it, don't get me wrong.
But I wonder if people know how to cut their connections to home anymore, when a text, an email or a phone call are just a button away.
Technology is magic. It brings people together. You travel hundreds of miles and then speak to people as if they were on your doorstep.
It's just that sometimes your own doorstep is the very last place you wanted to be
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