Serfs up

I am sitting in our caravan in the middle of a field in deepest Devon and I am actually on the internet.

This development has been brought to you courtesy of the wind, which doth blow with some force around these parts. Actually, I am writing on borrowed wind, as it were, since I am using up the last vestiges of available energy in our batteries from a considerable gale some days ago.

The wind would have gone unharnessed, had Gully not brilliantly restored the windmill to working order. The charger was faulty and he felt the little turbine was sited too low for maximum efficiency. This was rectified by a scaffolding pole and some ingenious engineering and now the windmill spins with great effect, unless the wind drops, as it now has.

So this visit to the internet is a little temporary, as, it is becoming clear, will frequently be the case. But it is nonetheless an extremely exciting development since I have come to view lack of access to the world wide web as the chief drawback of living here.

'What, more than running water?' asked a friend. Well, yes. This is a slightly odd view - after all,  hardly any of us were on the internet much before the late nineties. So why have I come to see it as so indispensable now, ranking it alongside the humble tap as a 'must have'.

Maybe I am just extraordinarily frivolous and find life without the frequent checking of Facebook updates unbearable. And there is some truth here. I simply like keeping up with people. In the days before the internet, when we used the good old-fashioned telephone apparatus, my bills were always eye-wateringly high. Social networking on the telephone and in the pub merely moved online (although I have to say, my preferred method remains the pub).

But the chief function of the internet - and the reason it has become so central to our life - as that it is a great enabler. Without it, access to information, goods and services becomes very challenging - and over the last couple of years we have needed all of those a great deal. The idea that I can sit here and with a couple of clicks surf my way to anything from a knitting pattern to how to make a solar panel - and then with another click source the materials I will need to do either, is so exhilarating, it literally makes my fingertips tingle.

There is a slight irony, however, to all this internet bounty. Our planning appeal was refused and we will at some point in the next few months have to move off of the land. This is a little sad. We still, however, have some really interesting plans and have come to see this as a chance to consolidate and regroup - so we are bloody, but unbowed

'Success,' said Winston Churchill 'is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.'


That sounds like us.