I sit in a tent at a Summer festival. It is, naturally, cold and wet and each tap of the keyboard is echoed by the thump of dampened, wind-blown canvas. Astonishingly, at the bottom of my screen, three of four little rectangles are glowing yellow, telling me that here, in this field in the middle of nowhere, there is (albeit splutteringly feeble) a wi-fi hotspot. OK, warmspot. A slight thrill runs through by chilled, unwashed body as I realise that I may be able to post this week's weblog after all.
You see, I'd determined that I wouldn't let a small thing like a twelve day holiday away from home stop me from keeping faith with my loyal reader and so I'd confidently packed my little netbook in the expectation that somewhere there would be a hotspot that I could hitch a ride on in order to post in time for my self-imposed deadline. Only a cynical fool allows experience to override that ever-present hope. And worse: I'd never experienced Cornwall.
An entire life spent on the same little island in the northern seas and I had not got around to visiting what turns out to be an area of natural beauty and spectacle second only, in my view, to the Swiss Alps (and, yes, I have visited the Grand Canyon: twice), right here on my own doorstep. I guess the people of Cornwall are heartily sick of being told how beautiful their county is, particularly since that especial curse ensures that there is absolutely no industry and therefore no work that would allow most of them the resources and opportunity to go out and enjoy it as the rest of us are able to. The denizens of Cornwall are, for the most part, employed in ensuring that we who can afford it, have a nice time. Once we leave and the storms arrive, they... probably sleep or something... I don't know. Nor do most people care, so long as they awaken in time to welcome them back next year.
But, I (as the more interesting writers used to do) digress. Well, not a great deal, for one of the concomitants of a lack of industrial and commercial infrastructure is that there is very little or, let's be honest, no wi-fi to speak of in much of Cornwall. I'd come across one in Lizard, a tiny village on a weather-beaten peninsular that boasts the most southerly... well, everything actually. Lighthouse; Post Office; phone box; toilet; pub; and it was in the most southerly-but-one of these that I got a strong enough signal to enable my wife to book a B&B for the next leg of our little foray but alas, allowed me no time to compose a piece that would be worthy of my loyal reader.
And so it continued. Whenever I had the opportunity, I never had the wi-fi.
Of course, by now you will be muttering that I could perfectly well have written the thing and held it until such time as I got a good enough signal to assign it to the server. (I often wonder where my website actually is – I assume a clinical and environmentally-controlled temple to the written word, somewhere in Silicon Valley but, more likely, some cobwebbed dungeon in the back-streets of Mumbai).
Again, I digress. Of course I do; because, in spite of my three little yellow rectangles, there is little chance of my being able to fling this missive off into the ether until I return home for, having tested the connection, I receive only a terse statement to the effect that this particular hotspot (cooling as I write) is for contributors and performers only. The likes of me will have to wait until we get back to civilisation. Perhaps I'll read a book instead. Now, where did I put my Kindle?
You see, I'd determined that I wouldn't let a small thing like a twelve day holiday away from home stop me from keeping faith with my loyal reader and so I'd confidently packed my little netbook in the expectation that somewhere there would be a hotspot that I could hitch a ride on in order to post in time for my self-imposed deadline. Only a cynical fool allows experience to override that ever-present hope. And worse: I'd never experienced Cornwall.
An entire life spent on the same little island in the northern seas and I had not got around to visiting what turns out to be an area of natural beauty and spectacle second only, in my view, to the Swiss Alps (and, yes, I have visited the Grand Canyon: twice), right here on my own doorstep. I guess the people of Cornwall are heartily sick of being told how beautiful their county is, particularly since that especial curse ensures that there is absolutely no industry and therefore no work that would allow most of them the resources and opportunity to go out and enjoy it as the rest of us are able to. The denizens of Cornwall are, for the most part, employed in ensuring that we who can afford it, have a nice time. Once we leave and the storms arrive, they... probably sleep or something... I don't know. Nor do most people care, so long as they awaken in time to welcome them back next year.
But, I (as the more interesting writers used to do) digress. Well, not a great deal, for one of the concomitants of a lack of industrial and commercial infrastructure is that there is very little or, let's be honest, no wi-fi to speak of in much of Cornwall. I'd come across one in Lizard, a tiny village on a weather-beaten peninsular that boasts the most southerly... well, everything actually. Lighthouse; Post Office; phone box; toilet; pub; and it was in the most southerly-but-one of these that I got a strong enough signal to enable my wife to book a B&B for the next leg of our little foray but alas, allowed me no time to compose a piece that would be worthy of my loyal reader.
And so it continued. Whenever I had the opportunity, I never had the wi-fi.
Of course, by now you will be muttering that I could perfectly well have written the thing and held it until such time as I got a good enough signal to assign it to the server. (I often wonder where my website actually is – I assume a clinical and environmentally-controlled temple to the written word, somewhere in Silicon Valley but, more likely, some cobwebbed dungeon in the back-streets of Mumbai).
Again, I digress. Of course I do; because, in spite of my three little yellow rectangles, there is little chance of my being able to fling this missive off into the ether until I return home for, having tested the connection, I receive only a terse statement to the effect that this particular hotspot (cooling as I write) is for contributors and performers only. The likes of me will have to wait until we get back to civilisation. Perhaps I'll read a book instead. Now, where did I put my Kindle?
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