“How do you feel?”. Four words. One question. But a hard question that leaves me stumped for a couple of minutes as I go through a process of replaying the last few minutes of thoughts and actions, then analysing my response to those thoughts and actions. It’s therefore fairly rare for me to talk about feelings, but mental health awareness is a really important topic for me as mental health problems have affected some people very close to me through my life. As 16-22 May is Mental Health Awareness week, what better time to open up.

I want to share my experiences following the birth of our little one – not in any comparison to what Kiri went through (incidentally, massive kudos to her – she is such a strong woman), not for sympathy, but hopefully to encourage others to talk and share. Especially men. Generally (although there are obviously exceptions), women are better at sharing than men.

When I was told that the process of labour is a bit like a race, I assumed it would probably be most like the 60m hurdles, or maybe even the 100m hurdles… at a stretch possibly the steeplechase. I wasn’t expecting Tough Mudder. 3 days. 72 hours. As I said, massive kudos to Kiri. It was punctuated with amusing moments; a birthing ball kept rolling around our room with a mind of its own, very much like the sphere in The Prisoner, Kiri stopped to have a contraction at one point and leaned against a wall before seeing a sign that said “wet paint”, and then there was one no-nonsense midwife (we got through 12 in total!) who, in a very interrogatorial (yes, that is a word) way said “your pulse is high. Why is your pulse high?” – and it obviously wasn’t because we were scared of her! And the view – wow – this was the view from the delivery room:

But against this backdrop it was so difficult to see Kiri in such pain. This was coupled with the fear of things potentially going wrong and just overall helplessness. I was watching the person I love more than anyone else in the world, knowing that she had to do this on her own. Knowing that I couldn’t take any of the pain or exhaustion away from her. And I felt so, so tired too by the third day on hardly any sleep, but alongside this came guilt that I was struggling, when Kiri was obviously going through something much harder. When we both look back on that 72 hours now, the word “traumatic” would come into both of our descriptions of the experience.

And then in those last few hours, the adrenaline kicked in as we welcomed into the world our bundle of perfection and gloop. For someone who doesn’t pay much attention to their feelings on a day to day basis, there were such intense emotions in those moments spanning the gap between concern for Kiri and boundless love for this new life. Despite this rollercoaster of emotions, I was somehow together enough to respond in a flash to a nurse asking “is it ok to put baby in the corner?” with the classic line from Dirty Dancing – “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”.

Within a few hours, Kiri had been moved to recovery ward and I had been sent home to get sleep until visiting hours the next day. Internally I was torn as I was so happy to be able to get some sleep, but alongside this I was harbouring a massive guilt about being happy, as I knew Kiri was paying the price for me getting some sleep. The next day, the recovery ward was a muddle of conflicting advice, tests, noise and deadlines – a really overwhelming place to be and that’s when the fear started. If I was finding it tough in hospital, surrounded by medical professionals, how would it be when we got home? Normally I’m solid in stressful situations (playing through the emotions post-event), but in this situation I was just a mess. And how was Kiri coping in all of this? Well, she was steadfast and strong, focusing on the job in hand. Surely that should have been my role. I was failing her. My biggest fear in life is failure.

Once we were all home, the struggles continued for me. Despite loads of support from friends and family (for example church friends preparing meals for us) I was aware that there were so many new things to think about and do, but I had no motivation to do them. Surely it couldn’t be right that people were cooking for me when all I was doing was sitting on a sofa – I had time to be doing the cooking too – why was I failing? I dreaded the nights when it was just the three of us. That sounds like a terrible thing to say. In no way did I doubt Kiri’s abilities – it was that I doubted my abilities to support her and the baby. There was so much to learn, and I was acutely aware that there was another human’s life depending on us getting it right. I felt like I was letting my family down; I felt like I was an additional burden on Kiri with her having to look after me too.

And where was God in this? My faith is the rock on which my life is built upon. I would love to say that I relied on God and that got me through, but that doesn’t seem to be how it always works. When you’re struggling, it’s sometimes hard to see where God is – it’s only afterwards that you see the touch of His hand. But I had His promise from Isaiah 40:30-31:

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

It would have been so easy to keep quiet and try to soldier on without people noticing (well, actually I was off my food, so people were noticing that something wasn’t right). But the most important thing that I’ve learned through watching people close to me overcoming mental health struggles is that it is really important to talk. Although part of me wanted to protect Kiri from having the extra burden, our marriage is built upon complete openness, so I shared my struggles with her. I shared my struggles with family and close friends. Then I got in touch with other Dads from church to find out – was I normal?

That chat around a kitchen table with three other Dads, drinking cups of tea and munching chocolates was incredible. There we were, having honest, open conversations about struggles of fatherhood. Each shared their “war” stories and talked about their own “failures” – the stuff that happens in families behind closed doors. There was one key phrase from one of the Dads that stuck with me:

Be kind to yourself

I had been beating myself up about not meeting my own expectations. I needed to accept that I was going to fail, accept that I’d make mistakes – I needed to be kind to myself. Not rocket science, but I needed to hear that from someone I look up to (yes, I know I look up to most people due to my height…).

Many months have passed and that rough patch seems like a distant memory. I know that it’s small in comparison to what a lot of people go through and it would have been so easy to have compared myself to others and therefore self-censored. But had I not shared, if I had tried to carry that burden on my own, it may have escalated – who knows?

My one plea to anyone reading this is if you’re going through a rough patch, no matter how small it might seem in comparison to what other people are going through, I urge you to share it with someone. A friend, a family member, a medical professional – it doesn’t matter.

And fatherhood now? Well just this morning the wee one face-planted onto the floor and started crying. I have accepted that even though I’m going to try my best, I can’t be a perfect Dad – I will make mistakes and fail my child. But this morning, the thought of failure as a father didn’t cross my mind as I threw the little one onto my shoulder and squawked like a chicken. Tears replaced by giggles. Happy times.

Until humans evolve enough to be potty trained from birth, changing nappies will be an inevitable part of a parent’s life. As will talking about changing nappies. We’ve had very mixed reactions from people when we’ve told them we’re going down the reusable route, ranging from “Fantastic, they’re great, aren’t they” to “I bet in 6 months time you’ll have shares in Pampers”. So why did we do it, and now we’re several months into it, have we any regrets?

You might have guessed from our previous blog post about our use of Cheeky Wipes that environmental sustainability and cost are two big factors in decisions we make in our lives (as well as obviously listening to God). There are all sorts of figures and stories online (without trustworthy citations) about how long disposable nappies take to bio-degrade and what proportion of landfill they make up. Equally though, there are figures and stories about all of the extra water and electricity used to clean reusable nappies. So, it’s a little bewildering on the environmental front, but as we mentioned previously with regards to baby wipes, it feels good to re-use something rather than throw it in the bin. And as for cost, well, we’d been given a full set of reusable nappies (thanks J + J!), so it was a no-brainer to at least give them a go and we were of the mindset that as we had them, we’d make them work.

Reusable nappies or “real” nappies come in many varieties – we’ve got the Bambino Mio two-piece sets. The way these work is that you have a folded cotton core nappy, which you then wrap in a liner, which in turn fits inside a wipe-able/washable nappy cover. You then have the fun game of trying to (often with one hand) fasten it securely to a squirming octopus who may squirt ink at you at any time… or so it sometimes seems. The idea is that the liner catches solids, but lets liquids through to the folded cotton core. You can then flush the liner (it’s biodegradable), and pop the cotton core into the washing machine.

Even though we’d got all of the stuff for reusable nappies, we decided to stick to biodegradable, disposable nappies for the first 3 weeks as there were plenty of other things to learn in those early days of parenthood. We then took the plunge at the 3 week mark and to be honest, for the first few hours… maybe even days… we found it hard work. Our little one has dainty legs and the elastic on the “newborn” covers wasn’t forming a good seal, so we had many liquid leaks. We tried different folds of the cotton liner, but to no avail. We then discovered Bambino Mio’s #nappycoverexchange, where if we sent back old-style covers (which came in different sizes up to a 9kg baby), we’d get money off the new-style covers (which come in one size up to 9kg). The new-style covers were a success. Yes, we still had the occasional liquid leaks, but far fewer than with the old covers and actually, those leaks could probably be attributed to tired parents not putting the nappies on properly!

Have we any regrets? Well, let’s weigh up our experience of the pros and cons of reusable nappies versus disposables.

Pro: Day to day cost
Once you’ve got the gear, the day to day costs of reusable nappies are much lower than that of disposables:

So how did I get that last figure? The flushable nappy liners come in at just under 3p each, then there’s the cost of washing and drying. For this illustration we’ve assumed that we have 20 nappies per wash (it’s regularly more than that, and we have cheeky wipes in there too):

• 46p – 3.25Kwh for the washing machine (2.5 hours at 60 degrees)
• 38p – 2.3Kwh for the tumble drier (an hour, but we try to dry nappies outside as much as possible)
• 14p – Bio-D nappy fresh (assuming 500g box does 20 loads)
• 4p – Lidl non-bio washing liquid (which lasts for 56 loads as we use it in conjunction with eco balls)
• 0p – water (we’re not on a meter)

So that’s £1.02 for 20 nappies, which comes out at just over 5p per nappy for washing and drying. Add on the 3p per liner, which gives us conservative estimate of 8p per reusable nappy.

Con: Initial outlay
BUT, that was a big caveat I started with; “once you’ve got the gear”. With regards to the initial outlay, if you were buying what we have brand new, it would probably cost you about £250 (two sets of miosoft birth to potty). Using the figures of 12p for a disposable and 8p for a reusable nappy, it would take 6250 nappies for the cost of both to even out (£250 / £0.04 difference – do correct me if my maths is wrong by the way). Apparently the average baby gets through about 5000 nappies from birth to potty… so if you bought the kit brand new, it might only be for your second child that you would start making a saving. However, once you’ve finished with the kit, you’ve got all of the stuff that you can then sell on…

Pro: Less nappy rash
Now this one surprised us – we thought that as reusables don’t have the moisture wicking properties of disposables, there would be more nappy rash, but we’ve found the opposite to be true. We use barrier cream for both disposables and reusables, yet our little one has only had nappy rash with disposables.

Con: Time
I would say that this is the biggest thing that works against re-usable nappies – they do take a lot of time. We end up doing an extra wash load every other day, which takes time. You’ve got to fold up the cloth nappies and wrap them in a liner (we do this in batches to save time when changing the nappy), which takes time. We found the actual nappy changes take a little longer, as you have to assemble the full nappy, then keep it assembled whilst putting it on your child. We also found there are more nappy changes to do, as there isn’t the same moisture wicking that you get with disposables – our little one lets us know when the nappy change is due!

Pro/Con: Environmental impact
As mentioned at the start of this blog post, this isn’t clear cut. However, as our reusable nappies are onto at least their third child, it feels as though it’s a less wasteful way of doing things. Yes, we’re using more water and electricity, but surely water and electricity are used in the manufacture of disposable nappies, which then take tens / hundreds of years to bio-degrade (depending on what you read)? Then again, a lot of waste these days is burned to generate electricity, rather than going to landfill, so is biodegradability (is that even a word?) a valid factor in the debate? As we have no hard facts, we just have to go with gut instinct on this one, which tells us that reusable nappies may be better for the environment.

To be honest, there are arguments for using disposables and arguments for using reusables. For the first couple of months we tried to exclusively use reusables to give them a good go and they worked for us. As an aside, I hadn’t quite realised the power of UV light when it came to bleaching clothes – check out a nappy that was left on the line for 6.5 hours on a cloudy day – the stain almost entirely gone:

We still primarily use reusable nappies, including in our changing bag when we go out anywhere. When we’ve visited family, we’ve taken reusables with us, then commandeered the use of the washing machine for our stay. But in the interests of getting a good night’s sleep (both for us and our little one), we have reverted to using biodegradable disposables at night. For now this works for us. Will this be the pattern until potty training? Who knows.

We have heard a rumour though that children using reusable nappies are, in general, potty-trained earlier than those in disposables. We’ll see!

Bertha is on the move once again. It was only this time last year that we sold her on for £5300 (a fair price considering the potential damp rear under the bathroom), then we saw she was on Gumtree in April for around £7000 (we assume the new owner fixed the potential damp rear under the bathroom), and now she’s on Gumtree again, listed by someone else for an cheeky £9000! We’re also intrigued that she now averages 25mpg – we travelled 11878 miles in her and she averaged just over 20 miles per gallon. And this is what she’s looking like now:

WARNING: The rest of this blog post is mainly about baby wipes. For those of you looking forward to reading a blog post about motorhoming, we suggest you head in the direction of ourtour.co.uk, as Julie + Jason have just set out again on exciting travels. We won’t be offended if you unsubscribe from this blog!

Right, now we’ve got that out of the way, we can get properly started. We’re parents. You know when you enter a foreign land for the first time, you don’t really understand the culture or language? Well it feels like a bit like that… only when we were travelling, we had the luxury of being able to observe a little before participating. So we’re very much in the stage of looking like tourists, being culturally insensitive, talking slowly and loudly when we’re not understood and generally blundering about the place, probably insulting people’s Mums. But hey, there has been some progress over the last few weeks – at least we’re doing it all with confidence now rather than tentatively and filled with fear like we were at the start.

Once I acknowledged that we were undergoing a recalibration of our lives to a new baseline of existence, it all kind of became easier. Our lives were flipped from being at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to right at the bottom, where life revolves around bodily fluids (input and output) and sleep (or lack thereof), with a little bit of work for added distraction. We are very much indebted to friends and family for their support and a big shout out goes to our church family who provided hot meals for us in the very early days – we felt extravagantly blessed.

“But what about the baby wipes?”, I hear you ask (my hearing has become very keen since having a child, you see!). “You said this blog post was mainly about baby wipes”. It’s ok – here it is.

We’re learning fast that baby wipes form a crucial part of parenthood. At the moment, their usage is solely in the context of nappy changes, but we know from parents with slightly older children that they’re essential for mucky hands and faces too. Now we’re trying to carry through our “green” living into family life and chucking wipes away regularly doesn’t sit well with us. We’re aware that you can get biodegradable wipes, but as we’d inherited some Cheeky Wipes (thanks J+J) we thought we’d start with those.

Basically, they’re reusable baby wipes. You’ve got one tupperware with water (infused with lavender for freshness) containing fresh flannels and another tupperware with water (infused with tea tree oil which has antibacterial qualities) for the used flannels. Once the second tupperware is full, you bung all of the Cheeky Wipes in the washing machine, then start over again. Such a simple system and it feels good to re-use something rather than throw it in the bin.

Even from a cost point of view we’re winning. At the time of writing, you can get a 12 pack of 64 baby wipes for £7 from Boots – that’s 768 wipes at just under a penny each (0.91p). The Cheeky Wipes kit is currently available online for £40. With a very conservative estimate of using 10 wipes per day (as I type we have more than that on the washing line from one day), after 440 days the Cheeky Wipes will have paid for themselves and we will have saved 4400 baby wipes from going in the bin and ending up in an incinerator or landfill. I call that a win.

I haven’t been paid to spread the word about re-usable baby wipes – in fact I don’t see why you couldn’t replicate the system with some cheap towels that you’ve cut up and spare tupperware. However, they’ve been such a success for us that I’m keen to spread the word. Saying that though, if you are inspired to buy some, you can get 15% off your first order by buying Cheeky Wipes via this link, and we get £5 off our next order. Oh wait, I’ve just read the small print, and you’ve got to spend over £40. Maybe not the good offer I thought it was.

In any case, cheekiness awaits!

We concluded on our travels that motorhome living was the simple life, but it was also the good life. We also concluded that it was a fairly “green” way of living. Sadly though, we don’t live in a motorhome any more, so we’re throwing away everything we learned about living a simple, good and green life. Nah, not really, but it turns out to be actually a lot harder to live simply, goodly and greenly (hmmm, I thought I was making up those last two words; turns out they exist already and mean something totally different!) when you’re not forced to by circumstance.

We’ve been living a fixed lifestyle (as opposed to nomadic) now for nearly 10 months again and the biggest change is that we have everything we want at our fingertips. Limitless water from the tap. Limitless electricity from the wall. Limitless internet data from the little box in the corner with flashy lights. Limitless gas to cook on. With the regular bills being the only limitation on usage, it’s so much easier to waste stuff. And waste we do. I’ve stopped brushing my teeth out of a mug. I’ve stopped boiling exactly the amount of water I need. I leave my laptop plugged in sometimes. None of these are massive crimes obviously, but as an evil giant (I jest) once said, “Every little helps”. In other ways I have changed my ways – I no longer feel the need to shower every day (and only occasionally does Kiri look at me, hold her nose and point to the bathroom), but we’re still a long way from the composting toilet and solar panels that we eventually plan to have.

There are other ways that we’re trying to live a green life. Our plastic consumption isn’t quite at our Lenten levels of 2 years ago, but we always use rucksacks when doing our supermarket shop instead of plastic bags and we’re overjoyed (you can tell we don’t get out much!) that we can even recycle plastic bags and plastic film now. Recycling in this country is pretty amazing compared to some places in mainland Europe. Alas, we can’t currently recycle food waste, but we’re moving shortly to a place that has a garden, so we’ll get a compost bin on the go there, then use the results on our home-grown veg; we’ll start with chard, potatoes and herbs. Our dream is still to one day emulate Tom + Barbara, but we need to find a Jerry + Margo to balance us first… and a bigger garden.

Now the “simple” bit is more complicated. Obviously. The clue’s in the word… or something like that. We’re learning that to live a simple life you’ve got to be intentional. Life tends to get full of stuff if you let it happen around you. We’re trying very hard not to accumulate things now we’re no longer living in a tin box on wheels, but it’s necessary with a child on the way. We’re trying really hard to keep to the bare essentials and had (for example) agreed that we wouldn’t get a baby monitor, but when we were offered one, we realised that we could use it as a walkie talkie and found ourselves saying “thank you, yes please, we’d love a baby monitor”. If we were in a different season of our lives, the “tiny living” that Julie and Jason are doing would seem very attractive. But we’re not… and it’s still attractive. Could we make it work?

Whilst I’m musing on whether it would be practical (it wouldn’t) or fun (probably) to live full time in a motorhome with a small child, I’ll end this stream of consciousness that has found itself recorded in the form of a blog post by briefly talking about one other area of simplicity in our lives. Technology.

When we were living off-grid in Bertha, we could only use our laptops when they were charged. We didn’t have a smartphone. We didn’t have a TV. We weren’t constantly connected to the internet and when we were, usage was capped. And you know what? It rocked. We read books, we played games, we talked, we went for evening strolls. Since returning we haven’t gone to the other extreme, but it’s amazing how easily the distraction of constant connectivity nibbles away at other, more edifying, activities we could be doing. It seems almost too much of a co-incidence that as I’m musing about possibly introducing a digital Sabbath to my life, I find out that this Sunday (28th June) is National Unplugging Day. It’s aimed at parents, but I think that it’s a good exercise for anyone.

We’ve still got a long way to go until we’ve reached the dizzying heights of the “proper” good, simple and green life. But we’re on the path.

About 9 years ago I was a member of a few social networks… I’d picked a username and I was spending a few minutes a day chatting to random people about random stuff and playing online games. I then received an invitation for the newest kid on the social media block, Facebook; a site where some of my “real life” friends were members. And there started my journey with Facebook which is ending imminently. Apparently I’d just bought a new car.

There are a couple of reasons why I’m leaving and I’ll start with the weaker reasoning first. I aim to live as simple a life as possible without too much extra stuff or gadgets and I’m pretty happy with my current position with regards to de-cluttering physical “stuff”. I don’t do so well though with digital “stuff”. We live in an information age where we can access almost anything from almost anywhere (apart from if you live rurally!). There’s so much information out there and I think I probably binge a bit too much on it and over-consume. Social media is great for seeing what other people are doing, updating others on what I’m doing… but I sometimes wonder if I’m so busy reading what other people are doing remotely, or planning how I’m going to document what I’m doing that I don’t live fully in each moment. So if I close one social media door, I should be able to reduce my daily information consumption.

Now, onto the main reason why I’m saying goodbye to Facebook. Control.

I’m not blinkered when it comes to internet companies making money out of me and it really is fair enough. When I browse through Amazon’s store, they are providing me a shopping service for free, whilst having to pay for all sorts of overheads such as hosting, staff etc. It’s fair enough that they’re going to track my browsing through the use of cookies to try to suggest products that I’m likely to buy. In fact, that can be quite helpful. It’s the online equivalent of a Nectar card; collecting data on their consumers’ habits then using it to improve services and make suggestions. I’m even OK with Google tracking my moves through the web and showing adverts based on my search habits and the sites I’m visiting. It’s part of the online economy and if I’m not happy about it, then I can (and do) disable third party cookies and have my browser clear cookies when I shut it. If I really want to avoid the tracking then I can choose a totally different search provider.

When we move into the realm of online communications (as opposed to simple browsing), there’s a minor paradigm shift. I’m no longer just consuming content, I’m also producing my own content. Taking emails for example, if I were to use Google’s Gmail through a desktop web browser, relevant adverts would appear next to emails. How do I feel about that? Well, I’m not entirely happy, but I’m easily placated by the thought that it’s an algorithm that’s selecting the adverts based on keywords in the emails. Before we’d publicly announced our engagement, there were a few emails floating around with marriage-related keywords in there… which invariably led to marriage-related adverts. Once again though, if I don’t want the adverts or the tracking, then I can choose a totally different email provider.

And then we get to social media. It’s only when I came to download my Facebook data archive that I realised how much of my life is in that 70Mb zip file. The Facebook help page about categories of data they hold makes for interesting reading. From the very beginning I’ve been wary about putting my whole life online, I mean why would anyone care about films that I like? But, as a lot of my friends have been using Facebook too, over the years there have been countless events, messages, pictures and life events shared. Worth lots of money to advertisers. When I was doing wedding photography, through Facebook I was able to show an advert for my services to anyone who had shared their location as within a 10 mile radius of my home address who had just changed their relationship status to “engaged”. That’s very specific targeting, which advertisers will pay for… and it’s kind of still fair enough.

But then we get to the bit that makes me uneasy. If I don’t want the adverts or the tracking, then I could choose a totally different social media platform… but all of my friends would have to do the same. I was attracted to Facebook in the first place because that’s where there were people that I knew. What keeps me loyal to Facebook is the same thing. I can’t just move to another social media platform, such as diaspora* unless enough people move with me. And so I’ve stuck with Facebook because that’s where my friends are.

But I’ve never appreciated the way that they treat me as a supplier of my information. Over the years I’ve had to fight for privacy; I’ve regularly had to check and change privacy and security settings. Every time they’ve added a new sharing option (such as location), the default has been “on”. You can understand their business reasoning; their business is information, so sharing is good. But it doesn’t respect me as a data owner.

The first time I considered leaving Facebook was 6 years ago, when I read the following in their terms and conditions about their data retention:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorise and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicence) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorise sublicences of the foregoing.

Now I’m not a lawyer, but in essence that seemed to be saying that I had to be willing to give up the copyright that I as a photographer own. In theory, Facebook were gathering a lot of images that they could potentially sell on in future, without giving any credit to the photographer. Hmmm. But, I convinced myself that I must have misunderstood the wording so I stayed and besides, all of my friends were still staying, so maybe I was just being overly cautious.

So for the last 6 years I’ve been using Facebook, with the knowledge that I don’t actually understand how Facebook might be using my data. I was a little surprised to find in my Facebook archive a list of every IP address that I’ve logged into Facebook from, a list of all of my previous friends and a list of previous email addresses.

One of the principles of the 1998 Data Protection Act is that:

Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes

Even if I understood what purpose they were originally holding that information for, surely they shouldn’t be retaining it indefinitely? But then again I guess the Data Protection Act doesn’t apply to Facebook as an American company.

And then a week ago I read a pretty damning article about Facebook (it’s worth a read) where I learned that my name might be being used next to promoted posts, which could be misconstrued by other people as me endorsing something that I might not ever have read. Woah. Hang on a minute, I’m not ok with that. I don’t use Facebook on my phone, so there are some things such as GPS tracking that are mentioned in the article that don’t apply to me.

The crux of the matter is that I no longer feel in control of my profile on Facebook. For the last 6 years I’ve told myself that it’s fine as I’m aware of what Facebook is doing with my data and I can set privacy controls accordingly. But now I realise that I don’t know how this private company is making money out of me. And I don’t like it. So, as Duncan Bannatyne would say, “count me out”.

If you’re reading this via a link on Facebook (which I’m sure many of you are), don’t take my exit personally. Email me, text me, write me a letter or pop round for a cup of tea. I want to maintain the friendships, but not in a territory where I don’t know the rules.