It’s been an adjustment. Last week, gosh how I did miss watching my favourite shows, but they are quickly slipping out of mind. I spent Sunday sprawled in the chair with a copy of The Times, The Observer, and The Kent Messenger, and read the papers from cover to cover. The sun was shinning, but as I kept reading a darker feeling filled the room. The news was all rotten, house sales stalled, mothers cause problems for the children by either coddling them or not coddling them, finances are upside down, the rich are being blamed for all the ills in the world, the poor and those on fixed incomes are choosing between heating and food,  and no one is saying to the powers that be…”hey how come you can’t manage the tax money we give you already?” Tax us more? I think not! I have always wondered why, when we pay our taxes, can we not tick a little box of our choice, I want my taxes to help children in need, the person next door wants money for the roads, the chap down the streets wants weapons etc..I truly believe that it would all filter along and everything would get done in the end. Say by some miracle the tax money was actually used for the purpose invented, life would improve for all. Why is it, that some 82 percent of tax money earmarked for our roads never gets there and now the talk is of a new road tax? Is it now going to be “the air in the tyre s tax”? Well, why not a granny tax eh? ( oops sorry that’s all done and dusted) What next a baby tax? Ah…ranting Sunday morning…not very pleasant indeed. I think next Sunday I am going to pass on the papers, even the holiday section was filled was warnings, –You could catch this horrible disease, do you have travel insurance– all sorts could go wrong without it!  What’s the point of leaving the house for all that? No, I think next Sunday I will put on Radio Four, have a good cup of coffee and curl up with a novel to read and listen to the birds chirping in my lilac tree.

Without instant access to the internet, I am finding it hard, like an addict adjusting. I want to respond to comments, to Facebook, and to stay connected, but on the plus side, I am having more dinner parties, more phone calls, ( I discovered I had loads of minutes that I wasn’t using- I was so used to emailing or texting). I did sign on the mobile internet to upload a photo and wow…I got to watch it slowly fill the page line by line. I am in the dark ages! At least I didn’t have to listen to the wailing and bonging of the old internet. This was silent, but oh so slow.

I went over to the local library to see if there were some tables to work on there. Downstairs the library was all shelves and what not. When I ask the librarian if there were tables to work on, she pointed me to four arm chairs with a coffee table. Upstairs there are rows of bench like cubicles with computers to use.  Does no one use library’s to read and write anymore, or is this one just odd? I’ll have to crack on to London Proper to find a table where I can spread out a book, papers and egads, world, a pen to write with! Never mind eh, endless cups of tea are being brewed in the kitchen. Pop over for a cup, has replaced the super fast email. I think this is a good thing. 

But I did notice something, the Robert’s Radio is on and I found it was carrying from room to room, Why? Why has there to be music, or talk when I am stirring the morning porridge?  Are we so afraid of silence that something has to be on all the time? Are we so afraid to be alone that we must be connected by the world wide web, the mobile phone, texts, twitters that we can no longer be alone with our own thoughts? Or is that if we find ourselves alone with our thoughts we stop and wonder where our brain went?

I found the odd nights alone, a bit harder to take. Everyone has left for their homes. I’m too tired to read a book and tired of the radio, now what? I still have some podcasts to listen to, so I’ll try that. I am still holding out. I can pop down to the grocery store and pick up a cheap as chips telly, but now I am wondering how long can I hold out before I go screaming to the shop!

I did step outside the night and see two stars, Jupiter and Venus burning bright. The last time in my lifetime that I will be able to see them. I know that if the telly had been on, I would have missed that. I want to google “why I am hearing people call them stars when they are clearly planets?”  But I can’t. I don’t have a book on the stars in my bookcase..so I just wonder.

I was writing something and has used the word rolled twice, I went to google a thesaurus word for it and was quickly reminded, You are not connected to the Internet. Oh dear…so out came the small Chambers from the bookcase, and I had to flip through pages only to discover what I had suspected, Rolled is the best word for Rolled in the piece I was working on, his eye rolled back, would not work with his eye rotated back,  revolved back,  turned back, spun back, wheeled twisted, sway, gyrated, moved, run, etc. I suspect and won’t know right now, that on google, I may or may not have gotten that variety of words  that I actually can’t use. I roll my eyes at it all! 

Am I going to turn into a crumbling old crank moaning about the world? I hope not. I did learn a marvelous expression the other day,  “I’ll give him a flea in his ear.”  I just love it. Sorry to say, I’ve given you a flea in your ear with all this moaning, so I am going to stop for now…I’ll see you next week. I’m looking forward to Monday and replying to comments, reading blogs, and getting the week off to a fresh new start with an hours worth of free wifi at the internet café!