The dangling conversation

I thought that, if I stood at the kitchen window and held my mobile up in the air at an awkward angle for minutes at a time, I might just get enough of a phone signal to explain Dancing Beastie’s long silence. No luck. I’m writing this in a cafe in the nearest village, where the internet connection is excruciatingly slow but better than nothing at all.

We have had no internet at home since the beginning of last week. The office phone line, through which it comes, is dead too. The telecoms company is ‘aware of the fault’, but they sure don’t seem very aware of what it’s like for my husband to try to run two businesses with no phone and internet connection!

It makes me realise how much I have come to rely on access to the web. Whether ordering the weekly groceries, following up information on the Gaelic evening classes I am hoping to start, checking whether younger son’s school is open (we had a LOT of snow last week), settling marital disagreements (yesterday’s was on the history of the development of symphonic form, although they are often considerably more low-brow), browsing the tail-end of the sales or just listening to the radio, so much of my daily life is now conducted online.

The enforced semi-hibernation in last week’s snow – emphasised by power-cuts as snowy branches brought down the electricity wires – was quite nice for a while. I bought what groceries I could at the local shop-cum-post office. My son got a day and a half off school as blizzards prevented parents and teachers getting out. I thrashed my husband at Trivial Pursuit.

But now the snow is thawing rapidly, the world is moving again, and we would really quite like to be moving with it. And I miss blogging! Apart from all the practical aspects of life which we handle online, I have realised how important the web is for social connections. I rarely feel lonely at home, even on days when I don’t see another soul between the school runs. That is not only thanks to the dogs (and the trees?), but also because I can keep in touch with the rest of the world online. Except that, as of the past ten days, I can’t. Come on, telecoms guys. I want to re-join the conversation.

P.S. The title of this post is lifted from an old song by Simon & Garfunkel, but I’m afraid that a link to it is beyond my capabilities at the moment!

P.P.S.My apologies if I am unable to respond to comments at the moment, and also for the loss of my old formatting: the settings have expired while I have been offline. Grrr.