Deborah Hill Cone: Life minus the net not such a turn-off

It was scary. We had the wrong broadband guff - Macs rule, people - and so here we were off the beaten track in the metropolis of Pakanae (pop: about 20) with no internet access. Did I mention there is no cellphone coverage here either? You can get a Vodafone symbol if you drive to the top of the hill, but at our shack, nada servicio. My adorable iPhone blinked at me saucily - "slide to unlock" - what a tease.

I felt like one of those stunted human blobs in the movie Wall-E. After centuries living in microgravity, consuming liquid food and relying on machinery, humans recline on hovering chairs and communicate only through video messaging screens. When they fall out of their hoverchairs they just lie helpless waving their stumpy paws. That was me. How was I going to update my Facebook status to say I'd just picked my nose LOL? How was I going to read the papers, harvest any opinions, download bad power ballads or alert the world to my five favourite people to punch in the face? (Scarlett Johansson, Bono, simpering Charlie from Hi-5, Miley Cyrus and Robert Mugabe, if you must know.) Then there were the practical things like asking my neighbour to put our rubbish out in our absence, letting my daughter's kindy know we were away, cancelling my bikini wax. I might actually have to use the, ugh, telephone.

The fear lasted all day as I kept instinctively opening my Macbook and then remembering it was no longer a repository for my life but simply a pretty, shiny, flat thing. It took a few days to realise this was not so bad. I suddenly seemed to have a lot more time since I wasn't joining useless Facebook groups ("I want to go to the pub with Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin") or reading other people's tweets ("David Farrar wonders if he is addicted to Diet Coke"). I looked out the window at the view, rather than looking at the wallpaper picture of it I had on my laptop, like that famous Leunig cartoon of the father and son watching the sun rise on the television.

And life without the internet sure is wholesome. I had no excuses not to play endless games of Uno (okay, so there was a downside). We had running races on the beach. I had so much more time to read. Actual books. I read the whole biography of Raymond Chandler: "The picture business can be a little trying at times, but I don't suppose working for General Motors is all sheer delight." Not my usual snackbox reading MO; picking out morsels from six tomes at once but never finishing any of them. And so much for the internet making you smarter. These days, news is not so much the first draft of history as the first scribblings on the back of a dirty hanky. Look at the story of the swine flu; there was so much info coming in from so many directions, a running total of victims, but no one seemed to have any idea what it all meant, or why the Mexican patients got so much sicker. Still, when someone shouts "fire" in a crowded theatre, no one stops to consider whether it is worth running for the exits.

As you might guess, I am heading back to climb back in my hoverchair so I can send this off to the Herald. But I rather like life with my aerials removed. Not so scary after all.

deborah@coneandco.com