After an hour’s beach work I was just about done. I’d read some book, I’d skimmed the papers, I’d eaten some bits of cheese on some oat biscuits (the closest I’ll concede to picnics, which I hate), I’d drunk some water as per my instructions from the Fawn (‘Drink some water! You never drink enough water’), I’d dried off from the swim, I’d got a pair of very numb buttocks after sundry failed attempts to get comfy on the not very flat rock: surely I’d done enough now to earn my release?
But I knew I’d never be allowed to get away with it. Not this soon. The Boy, maybe: he’d be OK with an early escape. Definitely not the Fawn, though. She’d see through my motives straight away. It wasn’t the beach itself that was the problem. Just the fact that there was no wifi or phone signal.
This is a phenomenon fairly unique to British beaches. Last year, on an island in Greece, the mobile reception was better than it is at home in Northamptonshire. Ditto Sicily, the year before. Ditto Bordeaux in May. In fact, thinking about it, I can’t recall anywhere in the world I’ve been recently — from Cluj-Napoca in Romania to Jaffna in Sri Lanka — where the signal and wifi weren’t a gazillion times more reliable than the rubbish we have to put up with at home.
If you’re an addict — as of course we all are — this can cause withdrawal symptoms so you feel like Gene Hackman going cold turkey in French Connection II. The worst I’ve ever experienced was earlier this year when I went to the most remote place in Britain, St Kilda, and had to last a good eight hours completely, totally and utterly without phone reception.
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