I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms . He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on the PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Going Native When we moved to England, I thought I adapted pretty quickly to life in a new country, adopting the usual habits, manners of speech, and turns of phrase. I drink mostly tea now instead of coffee, and scorn pubs which do not serve real ale, what I think they call 'cask ale' in the States - although to be fair, that may be more Yorkshire than England in general. I drive a small car, and put on another jumper in winter rather than turning up the heat. I have become accustomed to showers that have almost no pressure, and I am strangely interested in the local flora and how it may or may not be integrated into my garden. I am becoming assimilated. That is not, however, why I was standing on the pedestrian walkway over the railway embankment near our house at five-thirty on a cold winter afternoon. The truth is stranger still. My wife has become a train spotter. Well, to be fair, she's only really obsessed with spotting one train: The Flying Scotsman. To be fair, it's a really great train. It's been re-furbished, -novated, and -stored and is once again in service on the UK rail mainline. You can ride it between London and York! Or York and Salisbury! Well, for the most part, actually, you can't since almost every trip through September is already sold out. Theoretically you could ride the train through parts of England and Scotland, though. We aren't planning on doing so. Instead, we went out and stood on the walkway as the Scotsman came back from Scarborough after a test run. That was last night. This morning, my wife went down to York, to watch the train arrive, stay in the station for about a minute, then take off again. Tomorrow, we plan to head out to a spot south of York to watch it rumble by on a different stretch of tracks. I hasten to add, my wife is not alone in her interest. It's nearly a national obsession. At the station this morning, BBC Radio York was there taking video for their Facebook page and doing some interviews. It was cool indeed to hear my wife describing on the radio how she felt about watching the train - yes, she was one of the soundbites on the local radio station. I think the whole thing can be traced back to our visits to the National Railway Museum. It's well worth stopping by if you are ever in York, even if trains aren't something you are particularly interested in. Not only are there cutaway engines, which appeals to the engineer in me, but also a display of retired Royal carriages, which is fascinating. It may not be medieval history, but it is undeniably history. And if you're not careful, you might just find yourself out by the side of the road, spotting trains. Luddite'sLog, 24 February 2016 © 2016 Jeff Berry

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