No blackberries or airplanes - what a wonderful world!

In our garden, all is peaceful. Birds chirrup liquidly but mutedly, bees drone but the sound seems to be coming from far away, there’s the murmur of quiet Sunday morning conversations from neighbouring houses, children and dogs are, for the moment, becalmed, and workmen and DIYers all seem to have decided to halt their labours in honour of this beautiful day.

You can’t even hear the rumble of cars, and the trains don’t seem to be running. And behind all this strange, rare peacefulness, there’s a deeper silence - so deep, it’s almost unnerving. 

Because, you see, there are no airplanes in the sky.

We live in West London, and, while we aren’t, thankfully, directly under an airplane flight path, I can only assume, from the eeriness of the prevailing calm, that planes nevertheless normally form a constant undertow of sound, only revealed now by its utter absence.

I couldn’t help wondering, standing in our garden, blissed out by the aural nothingness, what the world would be like without planes. Leaving aside how wars and commerce would be conducted, I wonder what it would be like if travel in all its forms once again became a slow, difficult process undertaken by the few rather than the many, by those with time at their disposal rather than those cramming in a week’s ski-ing or ten days on a sun-scorched beach or an exhausting three-day City Break or a quick hop to New York for some pre-Christmas shopping.

Add to that the absence of telephones, let alone wi-fi hotspots or blackberries… 

If you feel a panic-attack coming on at the very thought, congratulations – you belong in the modern world. So did I. Once. Now, the thought of queuing up at an airport to get on a plane to go somewhere crammed with fellow-tourists panicky i  case they can’t cram in all the main sights in time,  or worried that they’re being ripped off by hirsute, string-vested bar-tenders, or lathering themselves with protective lotions because the sun doesn’t agree with them, or despairingly seeking out something, anything,to keep the kids occupied - well, the prospect now just makes me feel tired and sad. 

As for business travel – the endless hopping from one meaningless business hotel to another, from one blurred city you won’t actually experience to another city you’ve been to but know nothing about, from one dreary, stultifying meeting conducted in that enervating language, Business American-English, to another ghastly air-conditioned, jet-lagged power-pointed dronathon – well, business travel is simply unspeakable. (The unspeakableness is well-captured in George Clooney’s last movie, In The Air.) 

Let’s face it, the age of mass air travel is pretty horrible. The erosion of national cultures it causes is horrible. The panic, the exhaustion, the confusion, the indignities it causes are horrible. And what’s it all for? To distract us, I suppose.

Talking of distraction, has there ever been a more pernicious invention than the Blackberry? We were sitting in a London theatre recently, waiting for the play to start, when my wife pointed out that, rather than chatting to their companions or soaking up the atmosphere of the theatre (it was Ghost Stories at the Lyric Hammersmith, and the producers had made a huge and successful effort to dress the theatre to create an atmosphere of unsettling menace) almost everyone around us was gawping at their mobile phone screens. Far from preparing themselves for the play, the Blackberry-pickers were too damned busy catching up on emails or texts of checking out restaurants or bars to visit after the show. or playing games or searching for porn. I have no idea.

It’s the same phenomenon as the doctor’s receptionist cutting you off as you try to book your next appointment in order to answer a phone call from some other patient wanting to book their next appointment. Only, they couldn’t be arsed to turn up in person. Or the work colleague who carries on checking emails after you’ve started a conversation with them (the lowest circle of hell beckons). 

Whatever happened to the here and now? 

I remember once sharing a taxi with a business colleague in Lisbon (someone I like and respect enormously, by the way - an amusing, cultured, educated human being). It was a beautiful sunny Saturday in early March - much like today, in fact - and the city was positively glowing with beauty. I’ve spent a lot of time in Lisbon over the years, and I love its quirkiness and its splendour – its sheer originality. As we swept down towards the port, I turned to comment on the glories we were passing through – to find my companion glued to his Blackberry. I remonstrated with him, and he was somewhat sheepish – but he kept on staring at that bloody screen and clicking those sodding buttons.

Why? Why? WHY?

Fast travel and instant communication produce benefits and pleasures, of course. They increase the sum of our knowledge and our experience. But do they add to the depth or quality of what we know and what  we experience?

I really doubt it. 

Let’s hope the volcanic cloud keeps spreading - and let’s hope it starts to effect mobile communication.

I’m off back to the garden.