After a great deal of soul searching and hand wringing, I made the momentous decision to plant my flag permanently in British soil by purchasing a small pied-a-terre in Stratford Upon Avon. A series of unfortunate and completely avoidable events conspired and cascaded, one magnifying the other, to leave me stranded on the floor of this newly carpeted and painted, but otherwise completely empty pad. I lacked both internet and phone connections. Powerlessness, even though eoNext had switched the electricity on, threatened to turn this long-time dream into a nightmare.
As an elite Olympic gold-medal-level logistician, these snafus that foiled my best and oft-reviewed plans to furnish the new flat left me flummoxed. Barclays Bank had failed to replace my expired debit card. The new one would not arrive for five business days, and that stretched to a seeming eternity with the impending four-day Easter Bank Holiday. EE, a UK mobile carrier, would not give me a new mobile phone without the bankcard, despite my offer to pay for a full year of service on an (American) credit card. The … ahem… clerk (I am exercising superhuman self-restraint in not adding invective filled adjectives to describe him as he sneezed at me repeatedly. Thank heavens for booster jabs and plexiglass) who took my order at that same EE shop for a BT router – my gateway to attendant internet – managed to enter my email address incorrectly. Hence, BT could not contact me to advise that they needed a deposit on my as yet nonexistent debit card to process my order. Understandably, and unbeknownst to me until I revisited the shop for the third time, they had simply canceled the order.
The absence of those technologies made it impossible for John Lewis to contact me on the day they promised to deliver my new sofa between 9 and 11 am (I’d paid a premium to narrow the window from four to two hours because of the technology vacuum in my flat). They had only my email and my good friend Liz’s mobile number in case they needed to reach me.
I sat on the narrow, tiled windowsill (the only available surface for the purpose besides the eminently neutral beige carpet) until noon. I sipped tea and gazed out at the diminutive garden and birdfeeder below – and the very substantial car park just beyond the strip of flora and fauna. I read Hello and OK and Crime and Punishment until I felt that I, like Raskolnikov, was being punished for the crime of the audacity to make this fantasy of mine a reality.
When I finally admitted defeat, or at least disappointment, I surrendered my perch and escaped to the RSC’s café and free WiFi. Finally able to reach John Lewis directly, they informed me that the drivers “could not find the car park.” The same one I stared at for four hours that morning. After approximately that same amount of time on the phone: on hold, explaining the same story to at least six different “customer service” and dispatch reps, and crying, they agreed to arrange an “emergency” delivery the day before I was scheduled to fly home. In fact, the couch arrived the next morning because the resourceful and cheerful lorry drivers Jeff and Rob saw the couch, the address, and the debacle, and took it upon themselves to deliver it at 7:30am.
As it turns out, I would have no internet in the flat for the duration of my stay. BT activated it the day after I left, leaving me in a communication black hole whenever I was there. I did eventually get the debit card, and hence the mobile, but my limited data plan severely restricted how far my tech tentacles could reach.
Oh, boo hoo, I know. Truly first world problems as Ukraine and Covid both struggled to survive. Yes, for sure. But as my mother always said, “You have what you have.” While perspective and gratitude and relativity matter, so, she would say, do your own feelings about your own unique issues.
Two weeks in a tech desert made me feel peaceful and agitated, isolated and self-contained, confined and liberated. Once I crossed that threshold the outside world receded, and my own personal reality expanded. In retrospect I can more easily see the full impact of those two quiet weeks.
· Routine disruption – Reliable daily patterns create the illusion of control, which in turn quells my anxiety. The extent to which those routines relied on technology startled me. Yes, I could eat or shower at predictable intervals, but my morning check-in with the outside world in all its binary guises evaporated. Nor could I wind down in the evening with the New York Times crossword puzzle, videos of vocalising huskies, or calming Calm app meditations. I had no idea of what weather might manifest the next day.
· Contact – The closed door at flat 22 hermetically sealed me off from the world, barring contact with not only delivery coordinators, but anybody. In the most normal of circumstances, I like to touch base with friends and family. Those Spiderman-like tethers I send out keep loneliness at bay and connect me to those I care about. At that time, especially though, two friends at home were in acute crises, and my inability to reach them at what would have been their midday, added sadness and guilt to the stew of roiling frustration; I felt like a bad friend. I could be there for them, but only at limited and strategic points throughout the day.
· FOMO – I appreciated the inability to scroll for the endless tidbits of regurgitated and reconfigured cud that passes for news. Was that a hint of pleasant surprise that my iPhone radiated upon presenting its weekly screen time report? “Where have you been and what have you been doing?” it might have asked as it reported the precipitous drop from prior weeks. My parasympathetic nervous system appreciated the damming of the torrential news of collapsing Ukrainian cities and reproductive rights and soaring petrol and energy prices. Yet I also wondered what I might miss. I felt like a middle school girl banished to the isolation of lost phone privileges.
· Entertainment – It’s one thing to intentionally take a Facebook hiatus, a holiday sans wireless signals, or to live off the grid. It’s another entirely to have radio silence thrust upon you. I often keep the television on at home because the noise soothes me. Alexa accommodates me by playing 80s new wave or meditation music. The flat filled with an ear-splitting silence in the evenings, only punctuated by the cooing and chirping birds or the less lovely, too-loud neighbour’s television. These evenings reminded me of the vast hours alone in my container ship cabin on the high seas at age 19, although at least then I had Genesis and Pink Floyd on eight-track tapes to keep me company. I read and read more. I rearranged the sparsely populated cabinets and did laundry. I wrote. I furnished the empty rooms in my mind. But at a certain point I was right back in that cabin, pacing the small space like a big zoo cat, going to bed way too early for lack of anything else to do but accept the situation.
· Immediate vs. instant gratification – I once heard a comedy routine about pre-internet days. If you wondered where Tom Petty was born, said the comic (who the internet, in a lovely ironic twist, kindly told me was Pete Holmes) you had either to make a Herculean but possibly fruitless effort to find out, serendipitously stumble upon the information, or just accept the fact that you might never know. Constant, instantaneous connectivity has made us intolerant of anything short of immediate gratification. Now, I had to wait. As a rule, and while I may excel at planning, I suck at waiting. However, pearls of wisdom did manifest as a delicate reward for enduring the hours trapped in the oyster shell. Anticipation proportionally increases appreciation, and the waiting period between desire and action affords a moment for reflection and evaluation to review the veracity of the “need.”
When I return for my second visit, I will have a router connected to the world along with my bed, sofa, and minimally outfitted kitchen. I trust that the invisible connection will facilitate morphing my new house into a home, awash in the warm glow of radio waves.
Sorry I missed this … I hope it puts you in the way of beauty … xoxo
Wow - this is huge news! Congrats on living your dream. <3