Are computers & tablets romantic?

Apparently tomorrow is some kind of special day. Something to do with Rudolph Valentino or something?

(I just checked the spelling of his name on Wikipedia and it turns out actually he was called Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella Bit of a mouthful!)

Anyway, silliness aside, computers, tablets and so on might not seem to have much to do with Valentine’s day. After all, they’re not exactly romantic things!

But they can be useful things – and useful in all sorts of ways. So I thought I’d mention a few that might be relevant.

Probably the most obvious is the Interflora website. You can choose from all sorts of different flowers (red ones seem to popular at the moment!) and have them delivered from a local florist. And if you’ve suddenly realised you might be in trouble for forgetting the day, they can even do same day delivery on some.

But if you’re planning a romantic meal out, the internet can be useful too. Most restaurants now have websites and most of them have their menu on, so you can have a look at the menu in advance to check what they’ve got on to make sure there’s something you (and your other half, of course) fancy.

On some restaurant websites you can even book a table online, though if it’s short notice you might be better phoning – at least they should have their phone number on the site.

If you’re not sure about the restaurant, if you type its name into Google you can probably find some reviews of it. I always take online reviews with a pinch of salt – both because sometimes you’ll find they were left by the owner’s best mate and so are too positive and because sometimes people get carried away and leave negative or even downright nasty reviews over a tiny little thing… but if there are lots of good or bad reviews, that might be worth paying attention to.

Lastly, I’m told some people like chocolate – I couldn’t possibly comment…

But for really nice chocolate I’d recommend Hotel Chocolat – they do some really nice ranges and if you need it in a hurry you can get it delivered next day – or even the same day provided you don’t live too far from one of their shops.

Or if you want something nice but not quite so posh, Thorntons chocolates are also available online and they do next day delivery (if you order before 4pm).

So even if computers, tablets, smartphones and the like aren’t terribly romantic themselves, they might still be able to help make it a romantic day!

Something I never thought I’d do…
I freely admit that when I set off writing guides to how to use computers in my attic bedroom, I had no idea how the business would go. I had a feeling that lots of people would find them useful – but I didn’t know we’d go on to bring out books about tablets, smartphones and so on and still be going strong 12 years later!

And I certainly never imagined we’d have our own TV advert – but we have. It’s been running for a few weeks in one part of Anglia (running it in the whole of the country would be really expensive, so we started relatively small) but you can also have a look at it here.

Of course, if you’re reading this, you already know about our books and there’s a good chance you’ve already got the tablet books it mentions. But feel free to forward on this email to anyone else you think might find the books useful, so they can watch it too!

(By the way, the people in it are actors – I’m not in it and we didn’t get Mum and Dad to be in it either!)

Anyway, have a look here – and pass it on if you think your friends might be interested!