I have just returned from a week's holiday and you know how it is. Before you can unpack there is the communication to take care of. Masses of it.

You can barely get through the door thanks to the junk mail stacked up the other side. In my case, that meant 17 bits of post: two of them offering me loans, one promoting membership of an exclusive club, and a couple offering ridiculous services that I don't need, and most of the rest were bills.

Inside, the answering machine bleeped with half a dozen messages from people who mostly said they would then email me because they could not get hold of me.

And, on the computer, 137 emails. Some were from friends who couldn't find me on the phone, most were from work, and there was the usual glut from fraudsters hoping I might be daft enough to send my bank details to a mysterious man in Nigeria. But, then, a new horror. Three messages asking me if I wanted to be someone's Facebook friend.

This means that the online social networking phenomenon has finally reached the outer zones of the middle-aged resisters. And it finally arrived with a nagging, persistent, siege-like tone, as if the Facebookers have surrounded my house and are yelling through my letterbox, telling me to get with it or else.

The problem is that like most digital advances, it has arrived faster than any etiquette (or netiquette, as you are supposed to call it) has developed to cope with it. Sure, there are codes of behaviour once you are online, but there aren't any for those who want to stay offline.

All you can do is delete the email, or phone up the sender and say you don't want to be their friend, which seems rather rude. It's even ruder if you try to explain why you are opting out (not least because you think it is moronic and have better things to do). I can't tell them that, so I'll tell you instead.

I want to meet my friends not online but in the pub around the corner which is in danger of closing because too many of its customers are at home tapping on their laptops instead of drinking beer.

I don't feel the need to provide a running commentary on my life. You don't need to communicate in order to prove that you exist. Silence is good for the soul; endless digital chatter and 24-hour communication leaves less time for repose and for reflection

There are other things to do; like staring out of the window. I was doing this at the weekend when a cloud of feathers erupted over the neighbour's back garden.

A sparrowhawk had taken a pigeon in mid flight and nailed it to the lawn with its beak, clawing the poor thing to death. Nasty, but it's real life, and I would have missed it had I not dragged myself away from the computer ten minutes earlier.