I’ve given up email. Well, almost. At the weekend I set up one of those auto-reply messages, informing my correspondents that I would no longer be checking my emails, and that instead they might like to call or write, as we used to in the olden days.

Over the past few months, I had found myself becoming wedded to my computer in a worrying fashion. Deleting 200 spams a day is a drag.

And I was checking my email constantly, rather than getting on with my real work, which is reading and writing. Email was becoming a distraction, a burden rather than a liberation. I also wondered whether some of my business might have been more quickly and enjoyably sorted out with one phone call rather than five emails.

The reaction from friends has been mixed. I’ve had a couple of very pleasant phone conversations with friends I hadn’t actually spoken to for two years. Others have accused me of “going underground” or being a Luddite. But to those doubters I point out that I still have a phone number and address, so I can hardly be accused of vanishing into a hermitage.

We have to wonder whether digital technology, rather than making it easier to communicate, is actually doing the opposite. We now sit alone at a keyboard, firing off zeros and ones into the ether. Offices are silent. “Everybody’s talking, but no one says a word,” as Lennon had it.

Alongside my “no email” policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.

So far, so good. My life has not crumbled away. I have not disappeared off the face of the earth. And I feel a whole lot less hassled. Finally, I should admit that I chickened out of going the whole hog and have set up an emergency email address for filing journalism. Well, best not to get fundamentalist about these things. – The Guardian