I’ve gotten into the habit of sending ‘voice notes’ to friends and family as a way to catch up rather than texting.

For the uninitiated, a voice note is essentially a modern-day answer to shouting over the garden fence, only now you record your rants, ramblings and existential crises and deliver them straight to your mate’s phone, often with questionable sound quality and the occasional background noise of a gurning child or clattering saucepan.

You simply press a button, spill your guts (or your shopping list for that matter), and send it off into the ether, while you’re elbow-deep in the washing up or hiding in the loo for a precious moment’s peace.

My cousin and I regularly send each other “weekly podcasts” in this way to have a good laugh and whinge about the kids – which she tends to win, given that I have only four children and she has 18.

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