Have you any idea how lucky you are to live in Sussex? I have just been to Shropshire for a few days, where I had a bad attack of technological culture shock.

Before I get a pile of mail complaining I have slagged off Shropshire, I should add there are very few places outside Sussex I would like to live and Shropshire is one of them.

Not for the beautiful hills and the lovely lakes and rivers. Nor Iron Bridge and all the historical attractions, but because Shropshire does not seem to thrust technology down your neck wherever you go.

There seems to be a low key approach to technology in Salop that is definitely attractive to a Brightonian. Imagine dozens of villages where you cannot buy a floppy disc, let alone a re-writable CD.

If you ask for any sort of technology that is not agricultural, the shopkeepers look at you as if you are daft (mind you, they do that to me a lot in Brighton too) and direct you to the nearest city.

The big towns are not a lot better. I could only find one proper computer shop in the whole of Shrewsbury. How many have we got in Brighton now?

Not that Shropshire is digitally behind the times. All you Brighton-based Regency house restorers should have a look at the web site of Ludlow mail order restoration experts and see what they have to offer.

I counted six sizes of cut rosehead nails and spotted the most delightful doorbell I have ever seen. There are even some great photographs for those who would not know a cut rosehead nail if they sat on one.

Overseas now to Belize. I went there as a guest of the B (Sari Bair) Company, the 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles and spent a while in the jungle with them.

What a nice bunch of chaps and what a horrible jungle.

In my opinion, there are more bugs and biting nasties in Belize than almost anywhere else on earth and I provided lunch for most of them.

Fortunately, there was one I did not come across.

A fungus belonging to the genus Geotrichum, which can eat the insides out of CDs and render them useless, has been discovered in the Belizian jungle by a Spanish scientist. He discovered the hard way what the fungus is capable of.

His report claims that the fungus burrowed into his disc from the outer edge and ate both the thin aluminium reflecting layer and the polycarbonate resin that made up the CD.

The chief organic chemist at Phillips has said it was nothing to worry about (try saying that to someone with their life's work stored on a CD) and it was just a freak occurrence.

My argument is it has happened once and could happen again. Maybe we need to take a computer-friendly pesticide, a fungicide or a bug spray when we go on holiday to the jungle with our laptops.

www.periodhouseshops.com