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And then there were four… quiet house

Calgary Bay Isle of MullHere in the Davies house all is calm. The Sunday roast is ready to go in the oven, the veg prepared and the fireplace cleaned out in anticipation of coal being bought from the garage at the end of Burton Road.

Two kids are now away at their respective Universities with two left at home. It’s strange having a family of four where most of the time it has been six.  The most noticeable difference is the noise, or lack of it. Even though when at home they are rarely all in the same room at the same time the decibel level seems to shoot up when they are all here.

In the summer of 2011 I went camping on Mull with one of the kids.  We visited a place called Calgary Bay. This is a beautiful bay from which settlers left to go to Canada, hence, presumably Calgary. In those days it was a much bigger thing for someone to leave home. That was mostly it. Very little further contact.

Nowadays Facebook makes a huge difference. I still have a bit of banter with my Funkypancake  friend Dave despite the fact that he is now in New Zealand. I often chat with my son Tom at Warwick University online and now Hannah is established in Durham I have my lifeline to her though my plans to provide her with a hotspot for her room have been thwarted by the fact that her internet connection requires a browser login.

In time (a long, long time away in a far-away galaxy) when I become old and even more shrivelled than I am today the internet really will make the family seem close by. It is a shame that there is a community of older people today who have never had access to the web and who are probably too old to make the change. There are lots of people who would benefit from using Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends.

In time the number of internet impoverished people will become fewer and fewer because, being blunt about it, they won’t be around any more. I would be surprised if there was a single person leaving school now who doesn’t have a Facebook account, at least here in the UK. The mix will inevitably change.

It’s quite likely that what is deemed acceptable from a privacy perspective will also change things for the older generation. Many of the information requests made to telcos by the police force are for details of mobile phone location information of missing kids and folk with Alzheimers who have wandered off. I must give my login details for SamsungDive to my wife, if only so she can track which pub to come and get me from when I am no longer able to walk home (due to age and infirmity).

Right, time to put the pork in the oven. I’ve gone on enough.

PS I still don’t trust Facebook though.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

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