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Yesterday I had to go from Belfast to the East Midlands of England for a business meeting. The travel arrangements had been hastily done, and were not ideal. At 7am, the airport security man looked at me strangely and said 'No mobile?' as I flung my netbook, keys and 'liquids' out for scanning.

No mobile. Indeed I hadn't. And no time to go back and get it. I knew I'd most information that I needed on my netbook, so I didn't panic. In fact, I was a bit curious to see how I'd get along. A case of planes, trains and no-mobiles.

As it turned out, I didn't get along terribly badly, but not terribly well either. I'd 2 main problems. (a) boredom and (b) anxiety

Let's look at (a) boredom first.

I use my iPhone for listening to language learning MP3s (loving Michel Thomas at the moment), gaming, reading books, twittering, email and browsing the web. And these are all things that fill those endless endless snatches of downtime when you're travelling.

Standing in the slow coffee queue waiting to put your breakfast order in? Check tweetie. Sitting eating your breakfast in the cafe? Check emails, browse tweets. Waiting to board the plane? Catch up on news. On the plane? Plug into Michel Thomas French while playing Bejewelled and you land in England a wiser woman than you were in Ireland. And so it continues.

I was deprived of all this. So I bought a magazine. Scientific American Mind, to be precise, at the ridiculous cost of £4.70. An hour later, I'd read everything in the magazine, even the pointless letters to Editor that all talked about articles I hadn't and couldn't read.

Reading this magazine really brought home the fact that print is dead for me. I bought a magazine that looked relatively interesting. But in fact only maybe 30% of it was something I enjoyed reading. The rest of it I would've skipped over online. And the bits I enjoyed were stymied by the fact I couldn't learn anything more - I couldn't click deeper.

After finishing the magazine I was still left with about 12 hours of travel. If I wanted to read something educational on my iPhone, I could have read for HOURS and not paid a penny. If I wanted to spend £5, I really would've got a whole lot more value for money on the apps store.

Now, let's look at (b) anxiety.

I get anxious when I don't have enough information. This is particularly true of travel. Without a mobile internet connection to check my travel details, I had to go from coach to train station to train station to taxi just *hoping* that things would be OK. They weren't as it turned out - I missed most connections by five minutes, and spent hours sitting around waiting for the next one.

Then when I got onto a train I'd no real clue where I was, how long it would take me to get to the next point, or what was going on. I spent a lot of time being anxious. And what with having nothing to distract myself, I had a lot more time to be anxious!

The *sort-of* upside

The *sort-of* upside to all this was what happened when I had to ask people for help or information. I was shocked at how lovely everyone was. Everyone was hugely helpful, funny and kind. One gentleman told me I had the loveliest accent. Another wished me Bon voyage. I entered into little mini-conversations with strangers.

Of course, I have spontaneous social contact with strangers all the time online, but that's not such a novelty.

iPhone fail

Incidentally, I forgot my iPhone because it hadn't charged properly *again*. I woke up at 4am to find a very hot iPhone with a quarter charge. I had to disconnect it, let it cool down, and try again that morning as I got ready to go. This has happened twice now. And both times have been directly before I had to fly to England for an all-day meeting. What's going on?