KAREN Edwards rang me last week to tell me my column — the one about Wiltshire Police being apparently non-plussed because they believe Christopher Halliwell has murdered other people and yet they don’t have evidence yet — made her laugh.

In such a grim and miserable time for Karen and her family, I’d like to say how humbled I was that she took the time to make that call.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Karen is the mother of Becky Godden, one of Halliwell’s victims.

She also spoke to one of our reporters to thank publicly the police force and the people of Swindon for fighting for justice and for being on Becky’s side throughout the whole hateful saga.

Again, I am deeply moved that someone who has suffered such horrors has the time, the energy and thoughtfulness to reach out to people simply to say thanks. Let’s face it, she’s got enough on her plate already.

We could all learn a lot from such bravery and grace.

Life unplugged is not much life at all

THERE I was on Saturday morning looking up the recipe for Delia Smith’s coq au vin (delicious, I can recommend it) when all of a sudden, the internet went down.

And I mean down. Dead as a doornail, pre 1995, not-so-much-as -a-dial-up-glimmer-of-connectivity -type down.

Ever the optimist/too lazy to do anything about it (delete as applicable) I decided my best option was to sit back, do nothing and hope it would spring back to life.

So I did about 24 hours of hoping with the occasional flurry of unplugging, rebooting, jiggling and poking, but come Sunday afternoon, Netflix, Facebook, email, minute by minute weather forecasts and and obscure titbits of information (what is Locard’s Exchange Principle? I need to know NOW) remained firmly beyond my fingertips.

It was time to admit it: it was Mumbai or bust. And indeed, a 10-minute conversation with Our (very charming) Man in the Subcontinent confirmed that my router was probably, as those with technical know-how would say, knackered.

Our Man actually dissolved into peals of giggles when I told him my router was 11 years old.

“But ma’am, they’re only supposed to last two or three years.”

So at least I got my money’s worth. Good to know.

So here I am, the new router’s en route, and at the time of writing I’ve now spent 85 hours and 35 minutes (not that I’m counting) living the life I last lived in 2002.

Even then I had a clunky old machine as big as an old-fashioned television set that, if I unplugged the phone and plugged it in, I could use to surf the web very slowly.

I can’t remember what I would have been surfing for because this was the olden days, before Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Pinterest, online TV channels and the modern, reliable superfast search engine that is Google. That’s right, Google wasn’t even a thing back then, let alone a verb.

There’s been no TV because I don’t have a television and rely on playback channels like Netflix for my entertainment. There’s been no music, because I use Spotify and haven’t bought a CD in years... and if I did, I no longer have a working CD player.

I can’t play DVDs because I don’t have a DVD player and modern laptops no longer have DVD slots (or at least mine doesn’t).

I can’t email or Facebook friends, which is my main method of staying in touch.

I can’t order my online grocery shop and I can’t access my bank account.

I did finish reading a book on my Kindle app... but I can’t buy another one because I can’t access the Kindle store.

I have had plenty of time to do the dishes, soak in the bath, meet up with friends at the pub, talk to people on the phone, gaze at the alarming cobweb stalactites on my ceiling, damp dust the skirting boards, go to bed early and make recipes I know by heart because I can no longer look up new ones.

But all in all, I really, really, really miss the internet. It’s pathetic but true.

Our lives have become so dependent on it, I feel quite isolated and bereft without a world of people and information just a keypad away. My world in my little house has become considerably smaller.

But the most pressing problem of all right now is that I can’t work out how to get this column from my home computer to my work one... if I had the internet, I could Google it.

Be proud of Johnny (& Jenny) Foreigner

IN light of Amber Rudd’s brilliant idea of encouraging racial hatred and paranoia by listing all our foreign workers, I’d like to name and shame ours: Marion Sauvebois (pictured).

You may have read some of her features, particularly her restaurant reviews which constantly amaze those of us who work with her because for a tiny woman (5ft nothing) she can eat her way through several banquets worth of food before she declares herself full. And even then she usually has room for dessert.

Marion is French. And her prowess in the English language is astonishing - I did an English degree and I’ve learnt words from her I didn’t know existed (autodidact, anyone?).

She’s lived in this country for 11 years and has been at this paper for three years. Not only is her command of English better than many a Brit’s but her passion for the UK apparently goes back to childhood (yep, she is un peu folle).

So I think if other companies are going to list their foreign workers they should add testimonials explaining why they have a job there and what a loss they would be were they to leave.

It actually looks as though the Government, tail between legs, is doing a very embarrassed U-turn over this.

But should this proposal ever see the light of day, I sincerely hope companies will take the same line as Phil and Shareen from Old Town’s tapas bar, Los Gatos, who spoke out against the terrifyingly ridiculous notion, and respond with a big fat ‘non!’.