Tuesday 26 July 2016

Memorandum Monday - sooo busy

We took a few days for ourselves last week. We had a day or two going out and seeing stuff and then we went to Amroth Castle for three days in a caravan. What a lovely site. The caravan had three bedrooms and a view out across the sea. There was a swimming pool but we didn't get that far.
I don't cook when we go away. I am on holiday and what I want is for someone to cook for us. Mr M can cook but his reasoning is that when he is home he does the clearing up and the dishwasher so he doesn't want to do that on holiday.
We have bread and butter and tea and coffee so we break our fast with a cuppa and a piece of toast then we find somewhere for a late breakfast/brunch. we can then eat a dinner around 4/5pm and then spend the rest of the time in the caravan sleazing and watching TV or reading.

We found a super farm shop on our way home so we stocked up on cheeses and home cured ham.

The caravan did not have wi-fi and there was no signal for our phones so ever time we reached the top of the hill out of the village our phones would ping away like mad as the messages came in.

I love the immediacy of modern communications but it is nice to be relieved of the decision-making about whether to answer or not.

This set me thinking about why we have this need to be constantly connected Some of my Grandmother's siblings left this country over 100 years ago to make a life in the New World. They had only letters to keep them connected and it took sometimes more than two months for a letter to travel from Ohio to The midlands of this country. Then came widespread use of the telephone but that wasn't until the 1960s when the post WW2 baby boomers began to set up their own homes and there was more money to spend.
These days everyone expects a cell phone as though it is their right to have one and internet access is the same as a daily newspaper (and with just as much rubbish in its confines). My children are in daily contact with me and make no mistake I love it, being a part of their lives is just fabulous but ...

And there it is. BUT. Do they really need me to be there all the time? will it be harder for them when I am gone? Are they doing it out of duty? ( don't believe so) Do I need them to be constantly in contact? (um, yes?)

Is this technology a blessing and a curse?


My thanks to Sian at FromHighInTheSky for inventing this meme and keeping me writing

4 comments:

Sian said...

You have struck a chord (or rung a bell? or pinged a ping?) with me today. When I was away we had no phone signal on Skye and I don't mind admitting I enjoyed it. BUt today I don't think my optician believed me when I told her that, plus the fact that our answering machine failed while we were away and I hadn't got her message. True, though.

alexa said...

Very thoughtful and thought-provoking. I hadn't thought about the loss of the often almost-daily contact and the additional loss that might be, compared to previous generations .. A really good read - thank-you.

Eileen T said...

I've always thought that phones are really intrusive objects and having them in our lives are both a blessing and a curse, more so since the introduction of mobile phones.

Susanne said...

Yes, it is a both a blessing and a curse. Let's face it, most of us are addicted to our cell phones in one way or another - I most hate that I think it makes us impatient more than we need to be.