It’s widely acknowledged that the internet, email and the mobile phone have killed off the skill of conversation, but they have their uses too – especially when you need to announce bad news.

MODERN communications are great – especially for the gloomy news of life. Chelsy Davy announced the end of her five year relationship with Prince Harry by simply altering her Facebook profile. “Relationship: Not in one,” she said, which was a bit of a giveaway really. As were all the little electronic broken hearts received by her friends.

Easy, isn’t it? Bad enough when a relationship runs its course – especially such a long and high profile one – but how brilliant not to have to go through the dreary and often embarrassing business of telling everyone.

Over and over again. I never know what’s worse really, blatant curiosity or buckets of sympathy.

Both can be equally trying when you’re feeling vulnerable.

Much nicer to do it in one click and utterly impersonally.

We have traditional ways of announcing engagements and marriages, but not so of collapsing relationships.

Just the occasional glum message that “The marriage arranged will not now take place”.

And I’ve always thought we should have a designated Divorce section in the personal announcements.

It would save so many embarrassing moments.

But how much easier, simpler and neater to put it on Facebook.

A broken heart says it all.

M E A N W H I L E , Waity Katie Middleton (right) must be feeling a little anxious. Is Prince William more or less likely to make an honest princess of her when he sees his brother’s freedom?

Kate looks great, behaves impeccably and is a bright girl, but why on earth doesn’t she get herself a proper job? Chelsy has a great career in the law ahead of her. But if Kate and William fall out, what is Kate left with – apart from a lot of rather nice clothes?

MANY thanks to the driver and a particular passenger on the Arriva bus from Darlington to Richmond and Catterick on Saturday morning.

Smaller Son – perhaps not entirely unconnected to his reunion with Darlington colleagues on Friday night – managed to leave a justbought pair of trackie bottoms on the bus when he got off.

We were sure someone would have walked off with them. But no, a passenger had spotted them and handed them in to the driver, who duly gave them to the lad when we intercepted the bus on its return journey.

Many thanks everyone.

RIPPED skinny jeans, designed by a top Paris fashion house, are selling for more than £1,000 a pair.

Aren’t you glad you’re not rich enough to be daft enough to buy them?

SO simple paper puzzles, games and reading books will do more for your brain than £100 worth of high-tech brain training games. Well, that’s a relief, as I haven’t yet got round to getting one. I’ll stick to Sudoku and the crossword and trying to work out how far the Northern Rock staff bonuses would go if they were divvied out among their colleagues who were made redundant, or who lost their savings when the shares crashed.

Or how many bankers’ million pound bonuses it would take for every family to afford a free range chicken for their lunch.

Any sort of decent mental activity, of course, will keep your mind young. But there again, do you really want a young mind? Think about it. Think yourself inside the mind of the average teenager. Yuk. Not pretty, is it?

Apart from that, there’d be all that empty space...

Grown-ups, meanwhile, have minds crammed like attics, sheds and garages with things that might come in useful one day. Those rules we learnt at school, dates, poems, scraps of hymns, telephone numbers of ex-boyfriends, pass codes for places we worked long ago, books we’ve read, people we knew, how to make sloe gin, tie a reef knot or spot meningitis.

Of course, we forget things occasionally – we have so much to remember that sometimes, like a computer, the brain says it has insufficient space and ditches the nearest bit of information. Tricky, but no big deal. Remembering what rattled round my empty brain when I was young, I think I’ll stick with the grown-up version, thank you. If only I could find my way around it.

Back to the crossword...

SO the Lords are for hire – four Labour peers were apparently prepared to change laws in return for payment of substantial sums of money.

Are we shocked? No. Are we even surprised at the behaviour of the allegedly great and good? Not really.

And that shoulder-shrugging lack of surprise is the most damning comment yet on the state of Britain today.

VERY kind of Boundary Mill to invite me to their special Boxing Day and New Year Sale, lasting until January 18.

Unfortunately, their correctly addressed invitation didn’t arrive until January 22.

WENDY Akers rings from Darlington to say that she has just bought a posh new roasting tin.

A warning advises “may become hot during use”. Well yes, if you put things in a hot oven, that’s generally what happens.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
BY all means envy the Americans their new president and their optimism, but don’t be too hasty. They will soon realise that he is a man, not a Messiah, and the inevitable backlash will come when he can’t deliver all that they have hoped for.

As to your comments on first love, I would like to say that my parents were childhood sweethearts. They met when they were 12, never went out with anyone else, and married on my mother’s 21st birthday in 1946.

They had their share of good times and bad, had the occasional argument, but the only time they were parted was when one or other had brief stays in hospital. They celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary with a lovely family party, still as devoted as ever. My father died quite quickly of cancer and my mother followed him only six weeks later. The official cause was given as a stroke, but we know that really it was a broken heart, as she couldn’t bear to be parted from him.

Susan Clayton, Darlington.