I like Skype very much. Last night, for the first time in the best part of a year, I spoke to my entire family at once. It felt wonderful. It turns out that Luke had recently gone to see the Merry Wives of Windsor too, quite coincidentally. Rather interestingly, mark has got into Hemingway – I never had him down for a Papa fan, but he likes the unembellished prose. He is reading a Movable Feast, and it seems, rather coolly, that Hemingway once lived quite near where mark and Kat were living in Paris about two years ago. I find that very cool indeed. When we were there, charlotte and I had dinner one night with Mark and Kat, as well as my uncle and aunt; could it be that we were in a restaurant one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century once frequented? It’s possible, but I digress.

Skype, then, is great. It allowed us all to see each other, and to talk together, a bit like we used to around the dinner table. We decided that we must all get together soon. for one, I want to talk Shakespeare and Hemingway with my brothers. We may now be dotted all over the place, but with things like Skype, family and friends are never that far away.