I’M ON holiday from work this week and can’t believe my luck — it’s been hotter here than in Barcelona.

My son’s Torquay primary school last year introduced a fortnight’s holiday, rather than the usual week, during this spring bank holiday half term.

In theory it means you can take a holiday at a different time to everybody else and not have to pay the vastly inflated school holiday rates.

But we can’t go away as my older daughter is studying (or trying to, rather half-heartedly in the heat) for A-level exams, which start next week.

So we’ve had a week of day trips, mostly down to the South Hams.

In my holiday mood I decided to buy myself a good book, and rather optimistically picked up a 941-page translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

So far I’ve skipped through the intellectual translator’s notes, got bored with the heavyweight academic introduction, been puzzled by the prologue and unable to fathom the poems and sonnets.

Finally I sat down on the beach at Blackpool Sands, under the sun brolly, about to read Chapter One, Part One of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.

I read two lines and my son interrupted me. I was glad of the interruption. It was too hot for reading (we couldn’t even walk over the shingle without our shoes on).

So when he asked about my book, I did one of those parent things of using it as an opportunity for an educational discussion while he sat patiently pretending to be interested.

We’ve recently been reading his Shakespeare for kids books at bedtime and I started telling him Shakespeare was writing in England and Cervantes was writing in Spain at the same time (did you know that, spookily, they died on exactly the same day?) and that they are considered to be the founders of all modern fiction, and that some people still think they are the two greatest writers of all time.

“Really,” he sounded surprised. “But what about Dr Seuss?”

I forget he’s only eight some times.

But we got into another discussion about how Dr Seuss really is a literary genius and about how boring children’s books were when I started school in the mid-60s.

I blame my early dyslexia on Janet and John.

I can clearly remember that during my first few weeks at school I loved the Janet and John books.

What I loved about them was the artwork.

These two children lived in a wealthy parallel world, where the sun always shone and the parents were both happy and everyone dressed in a different primary colour.

It somehow made you feel nostalgic for the present, while you were still living through it.

But my love affair with Janet and John didn’t last.

The thing nobody thought to explain to me about books was that you had to look at the words.

I looked at the picture of Janet and they said ‘Janet’ and I said ‘Janet’.

Basically I thought you were supposed to look at the picture and memorise a phrase. And since they were all profoundly boring phrases, like ‘Janet has a ball’ or ‘John has a ball’ it was easy.

This went on for a few months. My memory was great. I was doing really well at reading until somebody covered up the pictures.

It took me about two years to catch up. And that meant going back to the beginning and having to learn letters and re-reading those horribly boring stories about stuck-up, middle class, goody-goody kids, in their big sunny garden, with their glossy-coated Labrador who never did anything.

Not even fighting each other or scrumping for apples or getting flashed at in the park.

I could see that the Janet and John books made for a mildly entertaining memory game, but as far as storytelling went, they were a disaster.

I was only five and they bored me to tears. Where was the plot? What was the motivation?

When I first saw a Dr Seuss book, with its lovely cartoon pictures and funny, easy-to-read rhyming story, I too thought the man was a literary genius.

If I’d started out with Dr Seuss I wouldn’t have all this middle-aged bottled-up anger to deal with. Possibly.

I’m hoping that I will be a late starter with computer technology in much the same way as I was with books as a child.

My problem is that I need to see the whole, big picture in order to understand the simplest little thing.

So, as my new love is a bit of a technical whizz, I have decided to try to reclaim the missing chunks in my IT knowledge by asking him a continuous stream of ridiculous questions every time I have to use any piece of modern technology.

So far he’s been very patient, but I fear his patience may be wearing a little thin.

This week he’s been in seventh heaven because he’s got himself a new iPhone and after three or four days I cuddled up in bed and said: “I’m jealous of your new iPhone.”

And he replied: “Yes, it’s amazing isn’t it.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I’m jealous of it. I’m starting to think you love it more than me.”

Alarmingly, he didn’t dismiss the idea.

He takes it to bed! He’s constantly playing with it. On the beach, in the pub, first thing in the morning, last thing at night.

He knows what’s happening everywhere in the world, all the time.

The iPhone can tell me the weather in Barcelona, if there are any late trains arriving at platform two at Taunton station, who’s winning the Grand Prix and if his guitar is out of tune.

Every conversation starts with the words: “Do you want to see my newest application on my iPhone?”

Isn’t it clever? Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it useful?

Now he knows I’m jealous, he’s started kissing it goodnight.