You can't beat paper

The other day I happened to find myself with the rare opportunity to go to the pub for an hour or so, with no strings or any guilt attached.

My boys were being looked after by my mother-in-law and my wife was out having a treat at a locl health spa, which is why it was suggested that I might like to go out for a drink.

Off I went to a find bar in Buxton, where my mother-in-law resides, in which I could settle down with a paper and a pint... or two. I found a suitable venue, La Brasserie de la Cour, (literally: The Court Brewery) which is not a very imaginative name given that it is located in Buxton's old courthouse, but it is a suitable name for what customers can expect: French-inspired cuisine (with the inevitable 'twist").

To reinforce its French credentials there is the obligatory memorabilia (French road signs, black and white photos of Paris, old tins, and so on), which I have yet to encounter in any restaurant in France. However, the owners have managed to avoid an over-themed pastiche and I think what they have done with the interior does work.

I went through the main restaurant area and into the bar. I order a pint of '1664', turned my phone to silent and opened my newspaper, now comfortably perched at the bar.

Despite the availability of tablet computers, e-readers and other portable devices on which you can surf the internet and read the news, I still prefer the interaction with something tangible, which you don't mind if it's dropped, gets wet or ripped. Looking over a double-page spread means that you can scan a lot of information very quickly and you can soon settle on an article that catches your eye.

I am sure that e-readers and tablets have their place in the world, especially for academics, lawyers and anyone who once needed to carry tons of books around with them in order to do their job. In this respect tablets make a lot of sense, just as I have been using computers for my business, rather than typewriters and faxes.

But it still makes me smile when I see the advert for a certain e-reader that features a womon at a swimming pool lying on her li-lo floating whilst holding her device. Of all the possible places to use an e-reader I can't think of anywhere less suitable. I would certainly like to see the spoof version, where she drops the e-reader, and I would also like to see how she actually gets on and off the li-lo on her own without getting the device wet!