By and large, I think the internet is one of the most significant and influential innovations of the modern age. You can interface with friends and family wherever in the world they might be, via the written word or live audio/video, you can buy and sell all manner of goods and services, and it is a vast source of information on anything you care to name – even donkey porn.

A lot of the time, though, it just gets on my bloody wick.

You are – by which I mean, one is – well, at least, I am – if you’re still with me? – bombarded with emails allegedly from banks and building societies explaining that your account has been the subject of unusual activity – it would actually be unusual if I used it seeing as I don’t have an account with you – vital security checks requiring confirmation of your PIN and other account details. What can you do to put a virtual spanner in the works of these scheming bastards? It’s a great shame there isn’t an option in Outlook to “reply with 5,000 volts”; that’d make their follicles sizzle. Maybe I should reply to them all, helpfully providing my hat and willy size, inside leg measurement and full medical history, hoping they’ll eventually get fed up. Fat chance.

I have often considered walking away from Farcebook because of the relentless, intrusive and overbearing way it subjects you to an irritating barrage of invitations to take part in inane quizzes the results of which are then published to an audience of your friends who are apparently agog with eager anticipation to learn what sort of television set you are (I bet I’m a wide screen) or which member of the cast of ‘Friends’ you would most like to (a) take out to dinner, (b) shag, or (c) punch hard in the face.

I really don’t want to know that someone has just found a three-legged brown sheep wandering (limping, surely? I am a pedant, after all) around the farm – I’m a tolerant sort of person and, if they want to play that game, leave them alone to do so, without a commentary best suited to a weak plot line in The Archers. The farmer’s wife going missing and a dismembered body discovered in a grain silo would be infinitely more interesting but I still remain unconvinced that I’d want to know about it.

It seems a lifetime ago that Farcebook hoodwinked me into signing up and, just prior to taking the plunge, I didn’t fully understand how it worked but some friends persuaded me – to join, that is, not that I definitely didn’t know how it worked. Now, of course, I’m being held prisoner in its cyber basement after years of digital servitude from which it seems impossible to escape.

At least I can catch up with what my children and grandchildren are doing – so it’s not all bad.