Floating about on a boat doing no more than not a lot in the name of fishing one of the main pleasures has always been that of being out of communication.
Twenty years ago this was pretty literal, you got on the boat cast-off and that was it. There was the radio but that was basically there to let it be known you were sinking or in some other manner in need of help. The assumption being, “no news is good news”. Loved ones might not have liked it but that is how it was.
Off you went and after a day or so of floating about you got into the swing of things very much like hiking, the pace of life dropped as you became accustomed to the restrictions this mode of travel imposed. Most obviously on a boat space was the restriction, in the same way weight is the thing when hiking.
If you were only gone for a week or two, there was no real thought of phoning home, you might make dry land, but usually you were a good distance from a phonebox and it was not a high priority really.
Now it has all changed, you always have the mobile phone. It does not matter if you never use it, it is there and it really does change the dynamic. For one thing if you are away for more than 48 hours it is almost impossible to be part of the modern world without the need to communicate with someone within that timeframe.
The mobile phone breeds a dependency. Rather like instant replay in rugby seem to have removed referees ability to think for themselves. Gone are the carefree days in which a ref makes a decision on the spot, for the most part now its TV referral time, five minutes indecision in which things are often unclear and a decision is made which commentators then say was probably wrong.
Mobile phones looked like freedom, turned out they were the very opposite.
I was musing on all this when I went for a stroll along a quiet stretch of coastline the other day. Well it would have been quiet but for two women. One went past me at power walker pace, one arm cocked in salute. She did not have time to look right or left or acknowledge my existence in any manner, she was too busy yammering loudly into the mobile phone clamped to her ear.
A few miles from the nearest house, she has gone for a walk, although it looked more like an exercise routine but rather than enjoy the sights of a wonderful sunset and the sound of waves she was involved in a high level board meeting. Well maybe not, unless she was a judge on the X-Factor because this is what the conversation was about.
All about normal then.
Five minutes later something was going on behind me and I turned to see what it was. It was another woman, this time walking about the same pace as me. She too had the familiar salute of a mobile user. I have no idea what the conversation was about, it was just a tedious drone from the distance I was at. They were not talking to one another because from what I had heard both these women were holding one sided conversations. They never actually stopped talking, indeed they seemed barely to dare take a breath in case the person on the other end got a word in edge ways.
From the fact they were both jabbering so determinedly into their phones I assumed they had instigated the calls. They had gone for a walk, which would take at least 40 minutes and while doing so had felt the need to phone someone and in the one instance I knew had to unburden their thoughts about the X-Factor to some poor soul.
The second person was walking slightly faster than me, but not fast enough they were ever really going to over take me. So now I had to quicken my pace a little to get some distance so I did not have to hear either of them. I did not want to slow down to let her pass because our relative walking paces was not different enough and I had no intention of being the creepy bloke than stopped and then walked behind a woman.
I only saw two people on this stroll along the coast and both of them were jabbering into phones with what really must have been un-necessary conversations.
Noise pollution in all its forms is a growing problem and I guess over the next 20 years it will be more so.
And if you are wondering, yes I had a mobile phone with me. I never leave home without one. It is pay as you go, the five pound credit has lasted 4 years so far, one person on earth has the number (and that is not me, I don’t know the number). There is a time and place for chatting on the phone and for me it is not usually when mobile.
