Mobile phones have their uses but they can also be problematic - Sarah Todd

For months it was dismissed as imagination and then, like an addict tentatively touting around for validation, the strange phenomenon was raised with The Daughter.

A day or so earlier we had been chatting around the kitchen table about the Dublin Horse Show then, as if by magic, some adverts about tickets and accommodation for the event appeared.

Similarly, there has been talk of a holiday with The Husband for the first time in six or seven years. We hadn’t got to the stage of looking anything up, but had spoken a sentence or two about when we might be able to go and whereabouts would suit. Within next to no time, adverts for swimming costumes and bucket and spade bargains were being broadcast across the phone screen.

“Oh yes,” The Daughter confirmed. “It’s hard to explain (note: to a Luddite like yours truly) but they do listen to you.”

Now while that slightly sculptured navy and white onepiece swimsuit was very fetching - although a bit offensive the phone had obviously judged its owner as too old to be buying bikinis - is there not something strange and alarming about our lives being spied on in this way?

The population will doubtless be split on this, with some finding it a useful offering and others feeling upskittled by it.

Falling into the second category, a wander was made into the local market town’s travel agency office.

The chap in there was very friendly and, guess what, he gave this potential customer three beautifully produced glossy brochures - stuff that up your net zero goals Mr Miliband - and we have had a lot of pleasure (yes, maybe must get out more) flicking through the different destinations. The icing on the getaway cake was his invitation to return if we found an overnight offering we liked the look of online. Of course he couldn’t promise, but he said given the chance he would be delighted to try and pricematch.

Here endeth the free advertisement for old-fashioned travel agencies - sorry, unsolicited like that swimsuit and horse show tickets - but sometimes the obvious really is staring us in the face.

The High Street can, of course, be disappointing. In Newcastle recently, for The Son’s graduation, his mother asked him to pop across one of the main city centre streets to buy her a newspaper. He had been teasing at this country bumpkin’s pedestrian skills, so walked straight into the task.

He came back empty handed.

“The man said they don’t sell them anymore, just vapes and sweets and stuff like that,” the fleet-footed one reported.

It was like a kick in the stomach; appetite for the breakfast we were walking to just ebbed away.

A leisurely morning, away from the chores of home, without the luxury of a newspaper really did cast a cloud.

Cut this farmer’s daughter who became a reporter at the age of 18 in two - like a stick of rock - and half would be the green of the countryside and the remainder the black of print. Both, of course, are under fire industries.

We accept their demise - like the local travel agent - at our peril. News is so much more than a snippet flashed up on a mobile phone screen, a sensationalist headline to get gullibles clicking through to the sort of sites that will then send them nothing but rubbish from that moment forward.

Like a holiday destination, some things in life need to be properly read about.

The small print needs checking on our Prime Minister’s latest attack on the older population. The Government says it can’t stand idly by on the matter of senior drivers. Something, as an aside, they seem to have no qualms about on other issues, such as our country’s illegal immigration crisis.

Nobody should be driving - young or old - if their eyesight isn’t good enough. But, just maybe, picking on pensioners is nothing more than a diversion tactic; steering headlines away from the mess they are making of the country.

What about fitting so-called black boxes to mature motorists’ cars, like the insurance companies do for younger drivers to enable them to qualify for reduced premiums? Bet they would show that many of the problems on the road are caused by - yes, you’ve guessed - mobile phone screens.