Technology (part 2)

I recently spent a fantastic weekend at a cottage in the middle of nowhere with some lovely mates, a collection of books, CDs, wii dance, half a dozen chick flicks and enough food to feed twice as many of us that were there. It was perfect.

Aside from the lack of ability to contact anyone in the outside world.

The holiday cottage backed onto the house of the proprietor, who because of recent storms had temporarily lost her landline, which BT were in the process of fixing.

Between the 5 of us we were customers of 3 different network providers- none of which gave coverage at the house. (Everything Everywhere? Really EE? Have you ever been to Ingleton?)

The closest place to get a signal was over the ridge of a large hill about 2 miles away. We drove out there a couple of times to check on the whereabouts of the last friend to arrive, talk to our respective husbands and kids before bedtime and (me only) forward on half a dozen work related emails to my line manager / husband because I'm on holiday thank you very much I love you.

Ah....
No internet.
No phone line.
No interruptions.
Just friends.
Eating and talking and laughing and being reminded about what made us friends in the first place.

This may sound idyllic to some, and for the most part it totally was, but I am practical and think about things like being able to alert the emergency services in the event of one of us waking at 3 in the morning with crushing chest pain, which given that more than half of us are now over the age of 40 is becoming more of a statistical possibility.

Thankfully this didn't happen and no such assistance was needed. But it did make me think how reliant I am on technology, how I am online a little more often than is probably healthy and the hypocrisy involved in trying to police my adolescent son's dependence on Minecraft when I don't cope too well without email over a long weekend.

WooWooWoo: When does security and sense of self become unhealthily linked to the presence of wifi? And is the answer to this in any way related to missing the sound of Siri's proper voice since the last upgrade?

Am testing this out by leaving the house today for 5 days WITHOUT my lap top. Like on purpose- I didn't just forget it.

I am not strong enough to do this cold turkey thing alone though, so am going with my husband and kids and 2 other families and their kids and my phone (with international calls, texts and data roaming for £4.99/day).

Baby steps.