All the usual forms of connecting with the outside world were down for two weeks
ur granddaughter, Caitríona, had a dream one night that Covid was a storm, traveling across the world, destroying everything in its path. There were times, it felt like that, with all the loss, fear, lockdowns, social distancing, and other changes to our daily lives that none of us could have envisaged. The lucky ones among it, have survived these strange times, and I guess like many, I thought I understood the new normal, but on New Year’s Eve, another storm hit.
We live in the Dublin Mountains, so we’re well used to storm conditions. Some nights, it’s as if there’s an angry beast raging, only to ease away by morning, as if it hadn’t existed at all.
However, on New Year’s Day, we witnessed the damage of this beast first hand, and part of the aftermath was a fallen telephone pole with live cables lying across our drive, making it impossible to get out. We rang the 24-hour emergency number and soon a crew arrived, removing the dangerous cables and pole.
We were lucky, but with the cables cut, we lost our phones, the internet, the alarm connection for our home, and, with little or no mobile phone coverage, communication wise, all the usual forms of connecting with the outside world were down for at least two weeks.
With the removal of the internet and telephone lines, and being cut off from email, Google, Netflix, Zoom, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, everything felt eerily quiet, and with only a handful of television channels (the kind that existed prior to cable television dominance), life seems to take on the appearance of another a time.
I recalled how, as a child, if an urgent phone call needed to be made or received, you ran to the one neighbour on the street who had a telephone. Now, with normal communication cut off, if I wanted to contact someone, it meant seeking out the mobile phone signal 7km down the road, as the car park of our local supermarket fast became a makeshift office.
Our grandchildren’s relationship with television went on a learning curve too. They live with us, and with fewer channels and an inability to search, download or scroll reams of choices, the concept of ‘live’ television, was something new to them. The usual, ‘no, no and no,’ after searching through 200-plus cartoon options, became much more niche, reducing the preferred choice to one programme daily for each, of them. Our grandson, Carrig, settled on Ben 10, which meant several repeats of ‘is it on yet?’ coupled with a bursting excitement when the long-awaited show finally arrived, as he ran around the house screaming, ‘Ben 10 is on! Ben 10 is on!’
Again, it reminded me of childhood, anxiously awaiting the next episode of Lost in Space or whatever other programme was the flavour of the day. Somehow the waiting made the joy of seeing your favourite show enormous. Less felt like more, more enjoyable, more exciting.
The less took on the appearance of more in other ways too. Without the internet or phones, that constant feeling of being on call, and always available, also disappeared. Sure, once a day I picked up my messages while visiting the supermarket car park, but it was contained. The bombardment of daily messages, emails, advertisement notices and alerts happening 24/7 no longer existed. Once I was at home with the family, I realised that with so many other things switched off, I could switch off too.
On around day three, late in the afternoon, I began wondering if I might read a book. I usually read at night, and the thought of reading in the middle of a weekday felt illicit, naughty, but also freeing. I wasn’t the only one feeling this. The family dynamic had shifted too, becoming a bit like a new pair of shoes that once felt tight and restrictive, loosening. With the children still on school holidays, instead of reaching for new technology, old board games came out, and the removal of digital distractions also meant the adults in the household, including myself, spent less time on mobile phones or tablets, allowing a fresh new normal to arrive. Quite simply, it became just us.
The sounds of a family laughing, or arguing, especially when someone cheated by taking an extra throw of a dice, echoed through the house, in much the same way as we played Snakes & Ladders, Ludo or card games as children. I thought about the many power cuts we experienced in our childhood too, the loss of electricity, similar to losing our phonelines and internet today. At night, we’d light candles and battery torches, creating animal shapes in shadows with our hands, a rabbit or perhaps a bird. The loss of one form of light, allowed another to take hold, and those nights still stand out in my memory, because in losing something, looking back, we also gained something too.
The two weeks without telephone or internet flew by and with that came a certain tinge of regret, aware all the noises of the outside world would soon return. But perhaps we also found something quite special in our temporary new normal.
They All Lied by Louise Phillips is published by Hachette Ireland and available now
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