FIRST of all, I’d like to apologise to the person typing. It’s not their fault I’ve given up the internet for a week and therefore have to phone this column in. In the bad old days, before the internet made the world an easier, faster, more-efficient, accessible, fun, exciting and sociable place, columns were often phoned in. But now that we have e-mail, everyone’s life is so much easier, and extraneous typing, dictating or paper-pushing is no longer necessary.
So it is with sheepish gratitude and a box of chocs that I say thank you very much to the person typing this – not just by way of dictation, but as a sweetener to help us through the next 900 words.
You are probably asking: why in the great age of the internet would anyone wilfully deprive themselves of it – especially someone who relies, works, plays and shops on it as much as me? The answer is: Fred MacAulay made me do it.
It’s all Fred’s fault – well, I did agree to give it a go for an item on his show entitled Cold Internet Turkey, which aired on Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland and will be followed up this Tuesday coming.
In theory, it seemed like an interesting experiment, especially as I am such a net-aholic – both at work and play. Coincidentally, I have also just started touring the Highlands with Mull Theatre’s Macbeth and am faced with limited internet access anyway (I am phoning this in from the village of Hopeman, near Elgin, and couldn’t connect to the internet even if I had to).
I thought, rather than stress about chasing those elusive connections, why not just go without and find some alternatives? Like the ones we used before the internet: carrier-pigeon, message in a bottle, that sort of thing – I guess. I can’t actually perceive a time before the internet any more, but we must have managed somehow – mustn’t we?
Naturally, I was apprehensive – especially because it makes work so problematic (apologies again, worthy typist. Please inject self-compliments as you wish) – but it wasn’t until Fred finally said, “Lesley, your time starts . . . now!”, at the end of the item that I really began to panic.
Cold turkey hit me instantaneously and, in that moment, my dull, non-net-assisted brain fell into torment. Suddenly I needed the net more desperately than ever.
FROM the moment I took off my headphones and made to leave the studio, a million urgent net needs sprang to mind: “Oh, God, I need to e-mail Kelly (my flat-mate) to let her know about the lodger I’ve rented my room to while I’m on tour”. I thought she’d be in Thailand for two months, not one, and now she’ll be coming home to find a stranger in the house and I can’t phone her, or send a carrier-pigeon – nightmare.
I also needed to find out bus times from Aberdeen to Fraserburgh to do the show on Wednesday, and to buy obscure trainers, a case of wine, some flowers, Bob the Builder bed sheets (for my nephew, who has just turned two) – the list goes on. I also needed to watch some film clips on YouTube (for an online feature) and some vintage Billy Connolly (for fun), and to solve a crossword clue (because it’s driving me mad) – and to e-mail everyone I know to let them know that I won’t be using e-mail for a week (I can’t believe I didn’t do that).
Besides all that, I needed to listen to the Fred MacAulay Show online – having obviously missed the live broadcast – but couldn’t. To say I wasn’t sorely tempted to cheat would be a lie, but something about my sudden desperate craving made me think that a bit of cold internet turkey might not be such a bad thing. The cold sweats, the shivering, the feverish need to phone and text people by way of digital alternative made me think there must be something badly wrong with me.
THOUGH vile and unpleasant, this cold internet turkey has inspired some revelations. First of all, I have realised that distant connections made by internet and phone – which often seem more urgent, important and engrossing than what is happening around me – are usually much less so. By setting my mind adrift across virtual worlds and vast distances for long periods, I often fail to connect with my immediate surroundings.
Yes, I can Google anything and anyone and find out how to contact them by e-mail or phone, or learn facts about them, or see pictures of them, or pinpoint where they live on a map. I can even find out who they are dating; their favourite colour, movies, music, and who their friends are by logging on to social networking sites.
But for all its advances and sophistication, the internet can never provide, nor rival, face-to-face contact. We can make and break hundreds of digital connections with people every day, for all kinds of reasons – to buy, to sell, apply, negotiate, set dates, break dates, hire a French polisher – but often they distract us from properly engaging with the world and people around us.
However, revelations are all very well – but will they change my habits in the future? Whether I’m supposed to emerge from this cold internet turkey “clean” of my addiction, I don’t yet know, but to be honest, that’s highly unlikely.
Besides needing to get online for work and to address flat-mate/lodger issues, and to answer those troubling questions that keep me awake at night – like “What’s the capital of Guadeloupe”; “Who shot JR?”, and “Who married the Owl and the Pussycat?” – the option to Google is a must for the pub quiz (come on, we all do it – don’t we?).
With three days of cold turkey left to go, I am now hitting the danger zone. It’s going to be a bumpy weekend – I’ll be gagging for Google, dying for a hit, trying desperately not to slip back into the net.
Will I make it to Tuesday’s show net-free or will I get caught in the web again? Tune in to find out.