To celebrate National Book Lover’s Day this Weds 9th Aug, I’m appearing on Instagram Live at 7pm with marvellous fellow novelist Victoria Scott, hosted by book blogger extraordinaire Emma’s Biblio Treasures. We’ll be talking about our latest books, writing process and favourite reads. It would be fabulous to have you there. To join in, you go to Emma’s Instagram feed HERE, although you might be able to go from mine too (link HERE). Fingers crossed I’ll find my way there as well.

While I’m a whizz at laptop video calls, I’m still an Instagram tyro, and it came as a bit of a shock that streaming live can only be done from our phones. We all looked like postage stamps in the practise run last week. And, as anybody who’s ever received a WhatsApp or Messenger text from me will know, it can be a hit and miss communication even with my reading glasses on. Mine is a love/hate relationship with smartphone tech, especially now there are AI apps on Google Play which might soon replace novelists like me. For such a clever machine, mine has no idea what I want most of the time.

Take last weekend when we drove Sam’s mother back to her new retirement village in the Derbyshire Dales, using my phone’s sat nav because none of us yet know the best way there from Warwickshire. I’d downloaded a soothing playlist which turned out to be a dirge, classical-music buff Grandma looking pained in the passenger seat, the rest of the family grumbling in the back. We tried to change it, but each time we cried ‘Hey Google, play more cheerful classical music!’ it boomed out Christmas carols. After three rounds of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I cried ‘Hey Google, play Bach!’ It’s reassuring female voice purred ‘OK’, then launched into Away In A Manger. In the end, we listened to the downloaded dirge as we drove on through glorious Eliot country, all rolling fields and red brick mills, the family exclaiming that we hadn’t come this way before and wasn’t it lovely?

It wasn’t until the sat nav was boasting ETA 10 Mins that we realised we were nowhere near Matlock in Derbyshire. It turned out that Google Maps had added in a new stop-point mid-journey: Playbark Ltd near Stoke on Trent.

Play Bach.

Maybe my phone understands me better than I give it credit for. It certainly knows how to make me laugh.

I’ll be talking to its little screen again on Wednesday. With luck, I’ll be on Instagram at the same time.