One of the benefits of reading novels is the realisation of the degree to which any individual’s life experience is limited. We all get to live only one life and act out only one set of life choices.

In the last few days, though, it feels like the limits of my own experience have been fired at me from all angles.

On The Rest is Money, Steph McGovern and Robert Peston discussed the enormous industry of narrative video games, which eclipses television and movies combined. This is a world that has completely passed me by. I wouldn’t know Call of Duty if I fell over it. The last console I owned was a PlayStation 2. I think the last narrative computer game I played was Simon the Sorcerer on the Amiga, and I don’t think I ever completed that.

On Search Engine, Taylor Lorenz told PJ Vogt about hiring a ‘content consumer’ to watch all of her friends’ Instagram stories and send her a summary report each week, saving her the trouble. The bit that surprised me was Taylor and PJ’s shared concern about appearing to disengage at the end of the project, and how her friends might take this. I don’t think I even knew it was possible to see who had viewed Instagram stories, let alone that anyone would obsessively check that.

In medical news this week, there has been a bit of unnecessary fuss about doctors being advised to avoid ‘sexting’ and to avoid including their faces in explicit images. One consequence of spending more than twenty years with Wendy is that the modern dating world has passed us by. The idea that I would want to send or receive explicit photos with potential partners seems vaguely ridiculous and not erotic in the least.

We all lead sheltered lives; they’re just sheltered in different ways.