Mr Trump is very fond of "alternative facts" and we ridicule and castigate him for it.

​But I've been wondering if his self-flattering fibs are so different from the air-brushed versions of our lives which we present on Facebook.

On Facebook we all lead perfect lives. On Facebook everyone’s life is packed with caring friends, doting parents, handsome lovers, adorable children and perfect pets. Everyone is talented and clever, and has a fascinating job. On Facebook everyone recycles, saves whales and rain forests, eats mountains of kale at the coolest restaurants, and goes on cycling tours of Outer Mongolia at the drop of a hat. 

No one on Facebook is lonely, unemployed, in debt, or suffers from acne, low self-esteem or depression. 
Let's start telling the truth on Facebook ... I’ll go first: 

​I’ve been walking around this week with two and a half thousand dollars tucked behind each ear and no one’s noticed except me. Which is something of a relief: I’ve been trialling a pair of hearing aids. Their invisibility has made it easier for the vain and foolish part of to accept that I am wearing these twin badges of age and disability. 
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Naturally, I’d much rather be wearing diamonds as big as the Ritz in my ears. Or if I must wear expensive hi-tech gadgetry, I’d prefer that it was something way cooler and more youthful - the latest Apple Watch perhaps - than a hearing aid. Self-conscious idiocy aside, the effect of wearing hearing aids has been more positive, and more radical than I could have imagined. 

​​I’ve always found the “For Dummies” books enormously helpful at watershed moments in my life: I’ve still got the tear-stained copy of Acne for Dummies which helped me survive my teens.

Potty Training for Dummies and Existentialism for Dummies made me a better mother. I owe my robust health to Medical Dosage Calculations for Dummies.

My finances are considerably healthier too, thanks to Hedge Funds for Dummies, Exchange-Traded Funds for Dummies (Australia and NZ Edition) and Success as a Real Estate Agent for Dummies. And of course, I wouldn’t be the well-adjusted person I am today, without Borderline Personality Disorder for Dummies, and the Personal Development Box Set for Dummies. 

Now that my daughter is completely self-toileting, I’m blemish-free and filthy rich through lucrative investment and real estate deals, I’ve found myself with a surprising amount of time on my hands. I consulted Making the Most of Retirement for Dummies and Dementia for Dummies on the matter. They suggested that I should take up a new hobby to fill the empty hours and give my life meaning. There was no shortage of options in the “For Dummies” back catalogue although I made a few misguided choices before I discovered the guide that would change everything. Become More Mindful in a Day for Dummies for example, only kept me busy for about 24 hours. Ditto Rugby Union Basics in a Day for Dummies. 

I found it impossible to summon enthusiasm for crochet or coin-collecting. Depressingly, I even found star-gazing, beer-making, beehive building and bird-watching of little interest. I was about to burn my copy of Living Longer for Dummies when I stumbled upon Drones for Dummies and my life took a sudden turn for the better. 

A friend recently lent me a collection of Spectator columns written in the 1980’s by English novelist Alice Thomas Ellis. They were still very funny and I polished them off in a sitting. 

However the columnist in me was awfully envious of the raw material Alice had at her disposal. She had a publisher husband who was also a brilliant Oxford classicist, many children, a house in London (plus boa constrictor), a house in Wales, a faithful family retainer and lots of weather of the sleet and snow variety. She also had cigarettes, booze and Catholicism and was mates with Kingsley Amis, Oliver Sacks, Iris Murdoch, and Beryl Bainbridge (more of whom later).

All I’ve got is one ex-husband, one child, a small flat in Nelson (plus Fox Terrier), a benign climate and atheism. Not a faithful family retainer anywhere. A lesser person might have sunk into rue and envy of Alice’s literary life in London but an examination of my own small life soon turned up something uniquely mine. Poor Alice probably had to rely on black cabs and the Tube to get around. But I have a scooter.

Let me set the scene. It was growing dark and I was returning from a dog walk with a very muddy Fox Terrier in the car when I first noticed the car-wash. Anyone familiar with my car knows that normally, a car-wash is way below my attention threshold. However, I do have a sensitive nose and on the evening in question the car reeked of wet dog. When I got home I would either have to wrestle a filthy and reluctant dog into the shower or spend the night breathing parfum de mutt through clenched teeth. Therefore the modest sign at the carwash advertising DIY Dog Wash blazed at me from the gloom like neon Eldorado. 

I first saw a mobile phone at a seminar in Auckland sometime in the 1980s. A man arrived lugging - somewhat self-consciously – an object which looked like a car battery with a phone receiver perched on top of it. An urgent and excited whisper ran round the room - “.... a mobile phone ... it’s a mobile phone!” 
We all gawped as its owner considerately tucked the object under his chair so that no one would stub their toes on it or trip over it. At the first tea break, this fabled machine and this man (who we would now call an “early adopter”) was immediately the centre of an awed cluster of onlookers. I remember thinking that I would never be well-enough off to afford such a machine or the extraordinary per-minute cost of using one.