Blissfully out of range

THE chap, the long-suffering chap in my life, despairs. For years he has been trying to drag me into the 21st century.

THE chap, the long-suffering chap in my life, despairs. For years he has been trying to drag me into the 21st century. Countless birthdays I've been presented with various devices aimed at keeping me in touch with him - and the world. The latest shiny gift in its sweet, sweet box: an iPhone.

It makes a great alarm. That’s all it’s used for. The chap has just about given up on me. You see, despite his propensity for tweed jackets, leather slippers and P.G. Wodehouse, even he has dived fully and deliciously into the glories of modern communication. (Don’t get me started on my romantic 40th birthday lunch. There were three of us in the marriage that Friday: me, him and his BlackBerry.)

I do not “have” a mobile phone. This is very difficult to explain to schools, children, editors and certain friends – some who get extremely cross indeed. “How am I meant to communicate with you?” one recently barked. (Well, you could pick up the telephone. Or email.) “But your kids will never, ever get any playdates. We ALL TEXT.” By this point said friend was shouting at me. Without realising.

The reason I don’t use one? The older I get, the more I crave serenity. And stillness. And silence. Need them, achingly, to function in this world; get kind of anxious and all-at-sea if I don’t have them enough. The mobile is not conducive to any of this. Plus I’d never be able to write with one beside me; all that distraction. I’d constantly be checking messages, needing to reply, fretting about why people weren’t answering or returning my calls.

I can’t allow too much stress into my life. I cease to function. You see, one morning, one terrible morning, I realised my world was too crowded after receiving three phone calls on the landline just before bundling the kids in the car for the run to two different schools. The calls had held me up, I hadn’t managed my own breakfast let alone the ever-present, galvanising lipstick, my head was swamped with impending playdates and book deadlines and I’d had a touch too much wine at a dinner party the night before and then a fractious sleep. Fatal combination.

I crammed squabbling kids in the car, throwing the last of the school bags in behind them, and folded up the stroller. Scrunched it down with my Blunny-booted foot and hauled it into the boot.

It was then I heard a faint squeak.

The stroller was responding. The stroller was responding!?! Oh my God, my God, I rushed it open to find a baby, doubled over, stunned. Trembling, I have never held a child so fiercely, so tightly, in my life. Trembling, I ran my hands over its dear little body and skull. The love. The horror. The guilt.

I quietly took a deep breath and strapped my precious baby in the car seat. “Why are you shaking, mummy?” asked my eldest as he watched me drive carefully, so carefully, to school. Again and again, before my eyes, was that vision of a Blunny curtly ramming down the stroller. The sickening heft of it.

I realised from that moment my life was too crazy-busy, and the decks needed clearing. Mobiles have screamed “added complication” at me ever since. The situation has worked so far. Despite my friend’s protestations the world gets through by talking on the landline, emailing, or even, God forbid, sending cards.

And my favourite time in England last year? When the ash cloud in Iceland stopped all flights for several glorious days. We lived in West London’s Notting Hill and I didn’t realise I lived under the flight path until there were no planes, suddenly, overhead. It felt so odd, unnerving, at first – just a clear, deathly-quiet blue that everyone looked up to and marvelled at. Then gradually, into the silence, the vast sky-silence, leaked God. In that frenetic city it was exhilarating, and hugely calming, to experience.

Favete linguis, declared Horace – “With silence favour me”. Yes please. And doing without a mobile is all part of that plan.