AFTER I mentioned World Book Night last week, reader Christine Smith emailed to offer me a copy of ‘Stuart – a life lived backwards’ by Alexander Masters, which was given to her by a friend.

As I write this I am awaiting delivery and looking forward to reading the story, which she describes as ‘a thought-provoking biography about a homeless person and what drives them to end up sleeping on the street’.

In the meantime I have passed my book, Killing Floor, on to a colleague and have promised it to Christine when he’s finished with it.

If any other readers would like to join in our book swapping – at this time of year I like to stock up on holiday reading matter – then let me know.

SPEAKING of holidays, we have spent a frustrating week attempting to book a four-day break in Rome.

We’d promised The Girl that we’d take her there so that she can wallow in Ancient Roman architecture in preparation for her studies as an archaeologist.

As we’re remarkably inept when it comes to computing matters we actually prefer booking our holidays the old-fashioned way through a travel agent.

There’s a certain safety net in place when someone else is doing the mouse clicking and taking responsibility for checking the travel details.

So off we went into town – only to discover that our short break through a well-known travel company would cost twice as much if we booked it in the same company’s travel agency than it would if we did it ourselves on line.

Three hours and one lunch break later we were still struggling to complete the on-line forms, reading and re-reading the details (I have heard too many tales of the problems that arise from misspelled names and erroneous dates to take this lightly).

Eventually the Man-in-Charge got out his credit card and punched in the numbers, only to have it rejected. So we tried mine. Great success. Or so we thought.

A few days later the bank called to inform us that we had, in fact, paid for our holiday twice.

What’s more we got an email to say that only our accommodation had been confirmed.

And in the end we had to speak to a courteous person from the Asian subcontinent and ask him to check everything for us and refund some of our money.

We’re now hoping that we actually have a holiday and that we won’t be going overdrawn.

STILL on the subject of the internet, we’ve also been wading through the minefield that is the student loan application process.

Secondborn had until this weekend to sort it all out so last weekend we gritted out teeth and sat down in front of the computer with all our financial details spread around us.

Although we have done this a number of times for Firstborn, it never seems to get any easier.

And, as we have done it before, The Man-in-Charge was asked for his password.

Which, of course, he couldn’t remember.

And so, once again, we ended up speaking to a real live human being on the end of a telephone line, who sorted it all out.

Sometimes I absolutely despair about what awaits us in the future when absolutely everything will be done on line.