Middle Class Problems: Are we really expected to neglect our Twitter feed just because our bijou B&B doesn’t have wi-fi?

It is the invisible phenomenon that has taken over our lives. Without it, we are but shadows of ourselves, unable to think, let alone act. Which is remarkable considering it's only been around for a decade. Makes you wonder what Galileo could have achieved if only he hadn't been so horribly held back.

We are talking, of course, about wi-fi. What it stands for, only a select number of people (those who can be arsed to look it up) know. We just know it is.

But what if it isn't?

Which of us has not checked in to a bijou B&B only to learn that they DON'T HAVE HIGH-SPEED ACCESS – and cursed the day we booked it. Should we really be expected to neglect our Twitter feed for a night? As for the alternative – waiting on 3G (fine, we should have upgraded )… what are we, dial-up dinosaurs?

Or how about when we're rummaging around a department store and want to check we're not paying over the odds for that delightful little cushion shaped like a sausage dog, only to find we have to jump through 36 hoops just to register for its service. That's if we haven't got stuck in the BT hotspot vortex.

As for when it goes down… the level of distress might lead others to believe that we were on the cusp of brokering a multimillion-pound deal rather than trying to Skype a friend over a latte.

The irony, of course, is that only moments earlier we were opining to that self-same friend that it's such a shame that we always have to be "on" these days.

Connectivity – our lifeblood, our bane.