How I learnt to stop worrying and love Facebook.

Earlier this year there was a news story about Salisbury cathedral having to move a statue because dozy tourists glued to their smartphones kept bumping into it.

Oh how I laughed when I read this, the poor simple Philistines so entranced by social media they failed to notice one of the wonders of ecclesiastical architecture; never mind the statue they just barked their shin on.

I’m not laughing now, mostly because I’m too busy trying to digest a big slice of humble pie.

Since then I’ve had to make the sort of admission that usually involves sitting on uncomfortable chairs arranged in a circle.

Deep breath, I’m forty -five years old and an addicted to my smartphone. There, that's better, almost cathartic in fact.

Like any addict worthy of a spot on daytime television I’ve got a story to tell, to sell if the price is right.

It all started when the man hooked me in, he’s traded up in these digital days from a street corner to a shop on the high street, but the patter dispensed to gulls like me is as persuasive as ever.

“You mean I could use it to send emails?,” I asked, a metaphorical straw hanging from the corner of my mouth.

All that and more he assured me, smiling slyly like a serpent offering up an apple.

Buy this little device and you’ll be a better and smarter you. The doors of perception will spring open and you’ll be ushered through with a guest pass.

Aladdin with his bag of magic beans couldn't have been happier than I was when I left the phone shop that day.

One little skin-pop of social media and I was hooked. There was a whole world out there waiting to listen just to me, I didn't even have to have anything to say.

When those doors slid open I perceived everything I’d known before as so much trash. All those Turner sunsets and Bach sonatas; pah! Even a cathedral is just a pile of old stones when you come to think about it.

How could any of that compare with swiping through endless videos of cats being cute?

I can handle it though, really I could stop any time, honest. That incident the other day when I posted a picture of my lunch was just a blip, anyway it was a really top cheese sandwich.

Darn! Where did that dumb statue I just nearly broke my neck tripping over come from?