Twenty four hours without the internet. 24 whole hours!

The Gollum Boy (see earlier post ) began pacing as soon as he got home from school. What? No internet? How could anybody DO THIS TO HIM? Didn’t they know he had an appointment with Syndicate on YouTube?

He had to resort to the X-Box WITHOUT KiNECT. Saints preserve us! Saint Louise, actually on the fifteenth of March. Saint Louise of the Daughters of Charity, the ones who used to wear those huge starched cornettes on their heads that made them look like seagulls. Her saint’s day is the fifteenth of March. It says so on my calendar.

Not the Ides of March! Oh, Blimey, I’ve just realized. We lost our phone and internet connection on the Ides of March. It must have been an omen. Well, we live along the Via Domitia, don’cha know. Julius Caesar passed this way on his way to Spain. You can hear the ghostly legions tramping by in their skirts and sandals. No, that’s Gollum Boy, tramping by on his way to raid the fridge. He has a face like a wet weekend and his eyes are like slits. (He’s still very grey, by the way, but he has had a wash.)

So, what can one do when all the connections are down? One could go for a walk. One could read a few chapters. One could learn a new recipe. One could watch a movie on TV. One could go for a walk. One could read a few chapters. One could . . .

I‘VE LOST MY INTERNET CONNECTION! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

The truth is, we’ve all got so used to having these connections at our fingertips, we take them for granted. And, I believe, we allow them too much say in our lives.

One of the joys of living in a small French village is that, from time to time, we are thrust into a past when such household commodities didn’t exist. In any case, what use would winegrowers and their fieldworkers have had for such things? Their days were already full of working to earn a living. Now, the winegrowers’ grandchildren have laptops and X boxes and Playstations and tablets and smartphones and none of them want to follow grandpa into viticulture. No. They want to be the next Syndicate. The next #1 Solo Gamer.

But they can’t all be number 1, can they? At some point, they’ll have to start paying their way. Give unto Caesar etc. We’ve let this internet stuff take over our lives. Its marching through our homes and families like the legions of the Roman Empire.

Well, we all know what happened to that, don’t we?

The trouble is, how will I keep up with Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin and my website when the Internet Empire collapses?