Time since last Internet usage: 1 day, 19 hours, 35 minutes and 2 seconds
Who knew that the secret to a good night’s sleep was sleeping on a half-deflated airbed next to my sister in a crumbling farmhouse where the wind constantly rattles the windows. I don’t know whether it’s still the exhaustion or if it’s the good old Cumbrian air, but for whatever reason, I’ve had a great night’s sleep and I’m the last one up.
I can hear noisy chatter in the kitchen as I shove a large hoodie over my flimsy pyjama top. I hesitate for a second, wondering if I should shower first and get dressed, seeing as Alexis is here, but then I stop myself. We’re all going to be living together, I’m sure at some point he’s going to see me for the dishevelled mess I am in the mornings.
‘Ah, you’re up,’ says Rosie, flicking on the kettle as I walk down the stairs. ‘There’s some porridge on the hob if you want some.’
‘Yes, please,’ I say, going over and helping myself.
‘Not to put you to shame, Daisy, but Alexis has been out for a hike already this morning.’
I look over at the Frenchman and take a deep breath. He’s got a little stubble on his face making him looking even more roguish.
‘It was very nice. The sun over the ’ills was beautiful.’
And that accent. Resist, Daisy, resist.
‘I’ll have to get up early one day,’ I say, trying to ignore Rosie’s sniggers. I may not be a natural early riser, but I reckon I could make an exception one morning if Alexis was leading the way.
‘Well, we’re going to go and hit-up the local builders’ merchants and then go to B&Q,’ says Rosie, fussing around the kitchen.
‘OK, well, I can hop into the shower and come too,’ I say, rising out of my chair.
‘Actually, it would be easier if you stayed here.’
‘Oh,’ I say, feeling a bit put out.
‘It’s just that we’re going to put the seats down in the back of the car so we can fit the bathroom suite in, plus all the other bits and bobs we need to buy. And it will be easier for Alexis to do the lifting and shifting.’
‘That’s fine,’ I say, trying not to feel too left out. I gaze around the kitchen wondering what I’m going to do by myself while they’re away.
Alexis flashes me a smile as he and Rosie head towards the door.
‘We’ll see you later on,’ Rosie says.
‘OK, see you,’ I say, waving and putting on a brave face.
I stare around the room wondering what I’m going to do with myself, then decide to clean the kitchen. Rosie would probably be really grateful, and it would ease my apprehension that we’re all going to get sick from it. I stand up, a woman on a mission, and go in search of cleaning supplies under the sink, but there’s nothing aside from a half-rusted can of furniture polish and a bottle of Jif disinfectant, which must be really old as I’m sure they changed that brand name at least ten years ago.
I’ll just text Rosie and see if they can get some more supplies, I pat around the table, then stop myself. Bloody phone.
I look out of the window, just in case they haven’t left yet, but the courtyard is empty. I suddenly feel lonely here in the house. Not to mention cut off. What if there’s an emergency? What if we run out of milk and I need Rosie to pick up a pint on her way home? Or worse, what if the spiders cocoon me in one of their webs and start to eat me?
I stare suspiciously at a web in the corner of the stairs and remind myself not to walk under it.
I tap my fingers idly on the table and wonder what it was people did in the old days. It’s not only my phone that I miss, but it’s the TV, the radio, the noise of modern life. Even the old fridge in the corner doesn’t have the right hum.
I can’t stay in the house, the silence is going to drive me nuts. And with nothing to distract me, all my thoughts turn to the Twitter implosion and the mess my life is in.
I stare at the hills and figure that if Alexis went for a quick walk, then there’s nothing to stop me from doing the same. It might even impress him – not that I’m trying to impress him, of course . . . The rolling hills around the farm look gentle enough. I’m sure I can follow one of the crumbling walls and walk straight along it so that I don’t get lost.
I go into the bathroom for a quick shower and, realising that it’s on our list as needing to be gutted in the next couple of days, I spend a little longer making sure that my hair is fully washed and that I’m properly shaved, exfoliated and buffed, despite the fact that I’ve ended up in freezing cold water again.
I attempt to dress more practically, finding a Fat Face hoodie to go with some jeans, and as I slip on my espadrille boots it reminds me to pester Rosie about me going in search of more Cumbrian-friendly attire.
I pad back downstairs, having a quick glass of water to make sure I’m fully hydrated before I go, and I’m just about to leave when I spot Alexis’s phone on the table.
What an idiot. They’re off on an excursion where there’ll probably be a phone signal and he’s left it behind.
I shake my head, fighting every temptation to pick it up, and tug open the front door. I’m across the threshold when I peer back over my shoulder at the phone. It’s as if it’s calling me, telling me it wants to be held and cradled in my palm.
‘Don’t do it, Daisy,’ I chide myself. ‘You’re stronger than this.’
I try to tell myself I don’t need a phone to complete me. It’s not even like I’d be able to use it; Alexis probably has it locked.
I go to walk out the door but before I’ve even got a foot over the threshold, I’ve turned back and picked up the phone, if only to prove to myself that it’s locked. But, to my amazement, it isn’t.
Now I know what Alice felt like standing at the top of the rabbit hole.
Who doesn’t lock their phone? They’re leaving it wide open to addicts like me to come along and steal it.
Of course I’m going to have to take it now.
I feel a ripple of excitement flow through my veins as I try to think about what I’ll log in to first. Obviously, I won’t be able to sign him out of any of his apps, so WhatsApp is out, but I can still access Twitter and my emails. Of course, I’m only checking from a professional point of view to see how bad Tweetgate has got, but even with that dim proposition, I’m still positively giddy with anticipation.
I peer at the screen and there are no bars of signal. But, luckily, I’m going for a walk up a hill, and didn’t Rosie say that there was a signal higher up? It really would be like striking gold in the hills.
I slip the phone into the large front pocket in my hoody and triumphantly set off.
For the first hundred metres or so I have a real spring to my step. The weather is better than yesterday, it’s dry and the sky is a dirty blue colour with only patchy cloud, and the wind that’s been rustling all night has died down. Aside from the cool temperature, it’s a pleasant spring day.
It’s not until I get to the boundary of the farm, where I have to go cross-country, that the spring in my step disappears, largely due to the depth of the mud. It seems that yesterday’s rain has turned the surrounding fields into a scene reminiscent of a festival.
I stare hard at the space between the quagmire in front of me and the hill on the horizon. I could stay here, where I’m standing upright without problem, albeit with no phone signal, or I could run the gauntlet of falling in the mud and be rewarded with a sneaky look at Facebook.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes as I step forward. The soles of my boots slide as they squelch into the mud. If my boots weren’t ruined before, they certainly are now. With reed soles and baby-pink suede, this wasn’t what the designers had in mind, but the lure of the Internet is too strong for me to resist.
I squelch along trying to keep myself upright, and after a while I get used to it. As long as I keep my arms outstretched for balance, I’ve got the stone wall running along to my right to grab on to if I need to cling on. Luckily, it’s that really sticky mud that makes your foot slide slowly so I’ll have time to react if I feel myself going over.
My calf muscles start to ache at the effort, my cheeks feel simultaneously cold and warm, and my lungs feel fuller from the fresh air. This must be quite the workout – almost as good as the military fitness class I see happening on the common near where I live, which I aspire to go to. I’m sure that I’m burning just as many calories.
Just think, if we had a mobile phone signal in the house, I’d be missing out on all this fresh air and exercise. I feel healthier than I have felt in years. It’s also giving me plenty of time to think about more important things, like what I’m going to do with my life now that I don’t have a job. Which is, of course, what I’m thinking about. I’m absolutely not making a list in my head of all the things I’ve got to tell Erica when I log on to Facebook . . . ahem.
I’m pretty proud at how much better I’m faring today than yesterday. The hill in front of me doesn’t appear to be getting any closer, but I’ve been walking for a fair while so I’m sure I’ve got somewhere.
I spin round to see how far away the farmhouse is, but it causes me to lose my footing. Instinctively, I grab for the wall with my left hand, but now that I’ve spun round, it’s on the wrong side of me and I end up on my bum.
‘Bugger,’ I shout, as I find myself wedged in. I try to stand up but instead I wedge my bum further into the mud. There’s only one thing for it – I’m going to have to roll onto all fours and push myself up. I take a deep breath and roll over, sinking my hands into the slimy mud. I manage to force myself upright, wiping my hands as best I can down my jeans. I must look as if I’ve been on one of those Tough Mudder runs. Not that it matters; no one’s going to see me up here anyway. I can’t believe I endured that freezing cold shower this morning only to have ended up like this. All I can hope is that I make it back to the farm before Rosie and Alexis start tearing the bathroom to pieces.
Making sure I’m holding firmly on to the wall, I turn and look at the farmhouse and wonder if I should give up on my walk and go straight to the shower instead. But I feel the weight of the phone in my hoodie and I know that I’ve got to get to the hill. If I don’t try now, who knows when I’ll get another chance? Alexis might not leave it lying around again, or Rosie might not leave me unattended for so long.
I quicken my pace and I’m practically jogging through the mud, finding that the slippery nature of it is propelling me along quicker.
I’ve been so focused on not falling over that when I reach the bottom of the hill I notice my surroundings for the first time. I turn around and I almost gasp at the beauty of it. I’ve been walking uphill without realising it and I’m now looking down on the farmhouse in the dip below. I can see for miles. I can’t imagine how incredible the view is going to be from the top.
I look over to the village, which looks quite big from here; its terraced houses huddled together. I think of Gerry and Liz and wonder who they’re gossiping with – or about. Judging by the grilling that Rosie and I got yesterday, I bet we’re the hot topic of conversation at the moment. Those crazy city dwellers who bought that wreck of a farm. But look at me now, that city dweller’s tramped across a muddy field, and despite the story my jeans suggest, has fought with the mud and won.
Now all I’ve got to do is get to the top.
I turn round to face the hill and eye it up like my nemesis. It does look a little steep for my liking. In fact, in front of me is not so much a hill, but a cliff face of imposing rock with shrubs growing out of it. There seems to be a small path that goes up diagonally, but it’s fairly narrow.
I pull the phone out of my hoodie and double-check to see whether or not I can access the Internet from here – after all, we are pretty high up.
I yelp and do a fist pump in celebration when I see that there’s one bar of signal on the phone. But there’s no 3G or 4G where that symbol should be; there’s just the dreaded E. Error? Emergency? Evil? I’m not sure what it actually stands for, but I know from previous experience that it’s a bad omen. I wait for what feels like forever while it thinks about loading a page on Chrome before it tells me the Internet can’t be reached.
‘Right you are, Mount Everest,’ I say as I channel my inner mountaineer and start my ascent.
I begin to walk up the narrow path, holding the cliff for support, and at first it goes well. I get fairly high fairly quickly and I pull out the phone to check if I’ve got 3G yet.
‘Yes!’ I shout with a little too much gusto, and I feel my foot move and the ground crumble underneath me. I grab at a shrub growing out of the side of the rock face, and as I save myself from falling I drop the phone.
‘Noooooo!’ I shout as I try to grab it, but I can feel myself falling so I cling back onto the rock face.
It lands a metre down the hill in a bush and I sigh with relief that at least it looks intact.
Phew. All I need to do is reach down and grab it.
I bend down and edge forward. It might only be a metre away, but a metre’s a long way when you’re hanging off the side of a rock face. Plus, it seems that the phone has come to rest on the top of a thistly bush, and if I don’t grab it carefully, I risk sending it toppling into the middle of it.
I try to work out my options. I could a) go down the path and try and reach it from below, b) reach down and risk pushing the phone further into the bush, or c) go back to the farmhouse without the phone and pretend none of this ever happened.
I pause for a minute. Option c is looking pretty attractive, and I’m almost tempted until I realise that Rosie’s going to twig if Alexis declares his phone is missing. Alarm bells will ring that I’ve been home alone, coping with my digital addiction, and she’ll instantly point the finger at me.
I take a deep breath and slowly lean over, trying to grab on to a tree root as I do so. I reach my hand out and try to grasp my fingers round the phone, and the tips manage to tickle the touch screen.
‘Just a little bit more,’ I say, wincing as I stretch my limbs into an extreme yoga pose. I’m pretty sure I could see it catching on – the smartphone lunge – as it works all your upper body and your core. My hands finally grasp around the phone, ‘Gotcha!’ I cry, but as I go to pull myself upright, the tree root I’m holding on to bends, throwing me off balance. I tumble sideways and manage to ground myself over a boulder as I cling on with one hand to the prickly bush the phone was in.
I may be hanging off a cliff face, but at least I’ve recovered the phone.
I don’t want to move too much in case I dislodge myself, but a quick peek over my shoulder confirms what I already know: the only way back, other than to fall down the hill, is to climb up. I give it a go but my upper body is still in spasm from the smartphone lunge and I don’t move an inch.
‘Fine pickle you’ve got yourself into, Daisy,’ I say out loud.
I look at the phone, which now appears to have no mobile or Internet coverage. It just says Appels d’urgence, which I’m guessing is the French equivalent of Emergency calls only.
Oh no, nuh-uh. I’m not being that person you hear about on the news who calls the mountain rescue at a cost of thousands. I can imagine the Daily Mail story now: Thousands of taxpayer’s pounds wasted as woman scrambles uphill trying to satisfy smartphone addiction. They’d totally nab my Facebook profile and pad the article out with psychologists reporting on how our digital addiction is killing us. I’d be like one of those stupid people risking their lives to catch bloody Pokémon.
The only trouble is, I’m out of options. If I don’t call the emergency services, then I have no idea how the hell I’m going to get off this sodding hill.