A few years ago, I had a lurker account. Even that kind of low-level involvement with social media didn’t sit too well with me, though, and I shut it down. I suffered no nostalgia; there was, I discovered, no Twitter-shaped hole in my life. It had merely been pushing more valuable activities out of the way. Let’s do a metaphor, shall we? If intentions are oxygen, Twitter is cigarette smoke.

And then I got a book deal. So there I was in September, lighting up again.

To begin with, it did not go well. After a nightmarish false start when I found myself surrounded by voices howling detestation and fury at each other, I temporarily closed my account and regrouped, unfollowed most of my previous lot and started again.

Now I mostly follow writers and people involved in publishing. They are in the main nice and supportive to each other. It’s been useful and entertaining. I’ve made many helpful connections and engaged with lots of thoughtful, interesting, funny people. Also, by a curious accident, Twitter has reconnected me to an old friend I thought had fallen out of my life entirely and forever.

Sometimes, though, you really can’t do right for doing wrong on there.