Keeping in touch - electronic stylee

This week I've discovered the pros and cons of the internet revolution, starting with an email from an ex-boyfriend's wife in the UK demanding to know what unspeakable things had been going on between her husband and me behind her back! I classed this as a big fat con.

Fortunately, in this case I was not guilty of anything more than a few friendly catch up emails over the last couple of years. In any case, it's a bit difficult doing anything more than that when you live on the other side of the world - my arms aren't long enough. HE - we shall call him Mr S - on the other hand, had apparently abandoned her and their two children, early on in our email exchanges, and had shacked up with someone called Vicky 200 miles away from the marital home. Chav-tastic! His 'love' life always was on a par with the News of the World and, quite frankly, Vicky could be short for Victoria OR Victor.

Uncharacteristically for him, Mr S had not deleted some of the incriminating emails from his account and so after breaking into it, Mrs S was able to read them, putting two and two together and making an understandably odd number. Fair play, she has clearly developed some finely honed hacking skills over the years. I quite enjoy looking over past emails, they act as a sort of diary. But in Mr S's case his methods of covering his tracks would usually impress even the finest SAS member - although not in this instance, ha ha!

But this highlights another con with emailing: Mr S had clearly lied through his lying monkey teeth - or keyboard here - to me about his domestic situation, giving the impression that he had stopped his outrageous sexploits and settled down contentedly. Why? Was it the desire to appear successful in life à la Friends Reunited? Or was it a case of exacting revenge for my binning him at the time for an actual rally driver, rather than staying with a pretend one?! The problem with being on the receiving end of lying emails is that you can't see if the sender's keeping a straight face or not.

So what about Friends Reunited then? It's great to find long lost school mates but does this mean that a lot of those smug married entries on there are only a pale shadow of the truth? Are point two of the children really in juvenile detention while the husband's out and about with his boyfriend Roger and wife's best frock? Well it would certainly make the website more interesting to read if that sort of information was on a few profiles.

Of course with Friends Reunited you have to pay a fiver to find out more. With Facebook it's all for free - a definite pro. You can search for long lost people and then bombard them with silly videos and pointless applications for ever more. It's fun. But the emergence of Facebook throws up a few socially sensitive questions: Isn't it nosey to look on other people's pages? What about if you spot a long lost bod you've been tracking down for years on someone else's page? If you contact them you have to fess up that you've been looking at that someone else's Fb page. It also begs the question, why didn't they contact you first? In fact, what IS the correct etiquette for contacting someone? Should you add them as a friend straight away, even though you haven't seen them in 20 years? Or should you send them a polite message first to test the water?

Also, what if an(other) ex or their new partner suddenly appears as one of your friends' friends and they or their pikey girlfriend is a known arch enemy, to be totally shunned and reviled at all costs??!! Do you then never look at your friend's page or forward them ridiculous messages again? Or do you just remove them from your list altogether and hope they don't notice? Maybe that's too extreme.

After receiving the afore mentioned email from the afore mentioned wife, I looked on Fb to see if she was on it. She was. From the limited information I was allowed access to, I could see that she was still in Manchester and she had one friend. Facebook made me feel sorry for my ex-boyfriend's wife and I almost added her as a friend.

Of course one brilliant pro the world wide interweb has brought us is Skype. For the cost of a headset you can make free skype to skype video calls all over the world via broadband. You can also make calls to landlines at amazingly cheap rates. It costs 1.2p per min for me to call my Mum's phone in the UK from Australia. The technology for video calls is still developing and it is quite common to see an image of someone else's face with a few million pixels less than they have in real life. Although getting them to move around quickly on the screen can be an interesting arty experience with all those vapour trails. Still, after a video call it feels as though you've just been for a coffee and caught up properly, especially if you are actually both drinking coffee at each end of the call. Unfortunately, with the time difference between the UK and Australia, it's a bit more tricky to share a beer on Skype, unless you like to wake up with a cold one!

Always remember though, when you're Skyping someone, to tidy yourself up a bit first, covering up any spots or cleavage. Then tidy up the room behind you!

So yes the internet's great for keeping in touch with loved ones, but when it comes to certain other people, sometimes Australia just isn't far enough. And Mr S? If you're out there, consider yourself lucky I never used tinternet to exact my revenge and publish embarrassing photos of you across the universe.