A columnist in one of the metropolitan newspapers wrote this week about how he sat down and read an actual book for the first time in ages the other day and (shock! horror!) he really, really liked it.

It was relaxing, he said. It was calming. It was an escape from the constant digital diversions that crowd in upon us all each day.

One swallow does not make a summer, some of Parade’s readers are probably thinking.

But here’s the thing: the column Parade read this week was one of three he’s read in the past year-and-a-half or so on the very same topic from the sort of people who’d previously shown great pride in how digitally connected they were.

Each of the columnists, in describing how they have reconnected with books, had the tone of a cult inductee cautiously re-engaging with the outside world – simultaneously uncertain and excited about what was ahead as they snipped (or severed) a little of their social media ties.

People look back in horrified wonder at images of themselves wearing enormous flares, an enormous perm or enormous sideburns and struggle to remember what they were thinking.

Parade wonders whether we will one day look back at photos of ourselves and our friends ignoring each other while we stare with complete absorption into our mobile phones and wonder what we were thinking back then, as well.

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IT’S officially August.

This might not come as a complete surprise to Parade’s readers, who assume the eighth month of the year started well over a fortnight ago.

But Parade doesn’t accept that August has arrived until the flowers on the camellia outside his bedroom window start to unfurl – and that momentous event began this week.

The coming of the flowers means the coming of spring and Parade, for one, can’t wait. It’s been a long winter.