Are you ready for the new industrial age?

I do quite a bit of editorial work for the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. Don't yawn: this organisation represents one of the most crucial parts of business and society. Without logistics, nothing and no one would ever get anywhere.

One of the hot topics at the moment is the Fourth Industrial Revolution*, which we are in the middle of, in case you haven't noticed. Broadly speaking, this is the emergence of the internet and digitisation, and the fusing of physical, digital and biological worlds. Still with me?

I love all this stuff. Artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, quantum computing (no, me neither) and nanotechnology are changing everything and while I don't pretend to understand it all, I'm constantly amazed at what is possible. That's not to say, though, that I'm ready to embrace it all in my own home. I don't want a smart meter or a fridge that can tell me when I'm running low on milk. Nor do I want a smartphone, because I don't want to be always 'on'.

However, my trusty PAYG Samsung nearly went in the bin this morning, because it stopped cooperating with me. It wouldn't let me key in words properly when I wanted to send a text and kept adding unwanted accents and peculiar characters. Fortunately, Mr Thorley was on hand to take a rational look at the problem and was able to tell me that I'd somehow managed to switch the input language to French.

Oops. I don't think I'm quite ready for the Internet of Things.

* Because I'm sure you're dying to know: the First Industrial Revolution took place at the end of the 18th Century, with the emergence of mechanisation; the Second came at the end of the 19th Century, with technological advancements evolving from the emergence of gas and oil as new power sources; the Third began in 1969, founded on the rise of nuclear energy and of electronics, leading to the development of transistors and microprocessors.

This is Tuesday

When I went to put the dustbin out at 7.15 last night, it was a chilly but dry evening. When I looked outside an hour later, the world was white. Commuting son was forced to have a night's emergency accommodation with us. The world is drippy today, as the snow is disappearing. Big thumbs up, by the way, to the council team for emptying the bins as usual, despite the ice rink in my road.

My main preoccupation at the moment is things breaking down. Having seen the attention lavished on my boiler recently, the washing machine has gone into a sulk and is making the most awful grawnching noise, as though it's been derailed. I fear a man will have to be called. More seriously, my computer has also started to play silly buggers, and my printer has just announced its memory is full - which is a surprise, because I didn't know it had one. I really don't have time for this.

However, I'm still basking in the comforting glow of a fabulous yoga workshop on Saturday with Andrea Kwiatkowski, and am clinging on to positivity: so here's a picture I took this morning when I went out to feed the birds.