It was surprising because the Caravan Club site was close to Longleat House, the famous stately home, and of course close to the even more famous Safari Park. Close by was also the Center Parc Resort. You'd have thought that the phone companies would see to it that all the thousands of visitors to this area, caravanners included, would be able to make phone calls and send texts and other messages with pictures attached of everyone getting matey with wild animals, or riding around the lake on a miniature train (I could see them go by from my own caravan). But no.
I'm a constant mobile internet user, and although it's foreign to my nature to send daft pictures to my friends, I do need access to the cloud for proper practical reasons. It was so frustrating not to get any signal from inside my caravan. I had to set up my half-dozen most important documents and spreadsheets for offline use, with an offline backup. It worked fine, for those files. The rest were inaccessible. As for looking up places to go to, and whether they were open, and what it might cost, no way - at least not from the caravan. If I leapt into Fiona and drove two miles to the nearest village on the main road, then yes, I could get a signal. But that was impractical in my nightie first thing in the morning, or late at night.
Of course, I could get messages and emails while driving along during the day, and when walking around towns. If I had the opportunity to read them while out, then I'd respond. Otherwise, they had to wait until the next day.
Frankly, this lack of mobile internet was a major downside of pitching at Longleat, and I don't think I'll be returning. I may not be the best communicator in the world, but I do like to be in touch at all times, and it was terribly annoying not to be.
Perhaps my notion of a holiday is very different to yours. I merely want a change of scene, plus the particular pleasures of travelling with car and caravan. I still want to enjoy the routines of my ordinary life, and feel deprived and disturbed if cut off from them.
I dare say a psychologist would assert that my caravan is literally my home from home, and that without such a safety-capsule I would quickly fall apart. Certainly I do treat it as my comfortable residence for the time being, and not as a mere shelter from the elements, somewhere to doss. And I do like to be able to shut the door and relish the private space within. Exactly as I can in my real home. That doesn't mean that I'm a recluse. I want connections. I want to be reachable. And to reach out. I couldn't at Longleat.
Years ago, before the Internet, before mobile phones, a lot of people who lived alone must have felt very isolated, and quite possibly prone to despondency and worry because of it. They might have had an old-fashioned landline telephone, and there could have been the occasional letter. But for days on end, the TV and radio had to supply their need for human contact. Not so now. The Internet is there to be tapped. It's bursting with news, opinions, advice, commentary and analysis on every conceivable topic, with all manner of entertainment and stimulation for the mind. You do have to be discerning and discriminating, and aware that most websites have an axe to grind, or a message to promote, or something to sell. But subject to that, there is more than enough to stave off loneliness and boredom, and encourage involvement in something congenial. I've got into the habit of looking daily at a string of favourite websites. It's a definite pleasure. And although my life isn't built around doing this, if I can't 'do my rounds' I do feel starved of knowledge about what's happening, and what's new.
Behind all this must be a fear of getting too old, too tired, or too mentally slow, to be concerned or care. I wouldn't be surprised to be told that using the Internet as I do is a way I've developed for staying alert and on the ball. Well, it's better than doing sudoku or crosswords. And although I like reading - I've bought four books recently, and finished one of them already - I find I'm more likely to nod off over a book than a laptop.
Morpheus beckons, so I'll end on that note.
Well, not quite. Talking of Morpheus, a few days ago I was exploring a narrow twitten (that's the Sussex word; I'm not sure what a narrow lane is called in Somerset) in Wincanton, when I found this fixed to a wall. It looked as if someone had gone to a lot of trouble to compose a seasonal poem for their Mum, illustrated with a suitable seasonal photo, and laminating the ensemble to protect it from the weather.
The poem reads as follows:
The Blackbird no longer sings, mute now 'til Spring.
His young have flown. he sits alone, duty done.
Chills of Autumn are on us now,
Morning mist that cloaks the hills
rises and evaporates like last night's dreams -
it seems as though Summer never was.
Memories of it slip through my fingers like sand.
A grain or two lingers like those mayfly words
that came and went like a sunbeam.
Sunamis of sadness
and joyous moments of magic madness remembered.
Times when the earth turned
and my heart leaned to love.
In the tweenlight I invite Morpheus to come,
take me in his arms, hold me tight and rock me gently into sleep -
I embrace the transition of day into night.
Moonrise comes early...
witching time time when silence falls and slumber calls.
I am no judge of poetry, but this evokes (for me) wistfulness for a carefree summer that came and went, replaced by the colder and darker days of Autumn. (Shouldn't it be 'Tsunamis'? I don't suppose it matters) It was so unexpected, finding such a thing down a narrow lane in a small Somerset town.
You may be sure that while parked at Wincanton I fired up my phone and caught up on my emails!
