Our Phones are Listening to Us

This is going to sound like conspiracy theory, but it isn’t.  These are things which happened to us.

A few weeks ago, Perran and Carenza joined us for a staycation.

“It’s so lovely to have you here,” I gushed.  “I’m having a wonderful time.”

From my pocket, a female voice said, “I’m glad to hear that.”

Later, Nigel was saying, “I must change my ringtone – Perran hates this one.” (‘Popcorn’ – if you’re wondering.)  Next time his phone rang, he didn’t pick it up at once, because he didn’t recognise the ringtone – it had been changed.

Our suspicions first started after we spotted a red squirrel while on holiday and spent a while watching and discussing it.  Afterwards, Nigel’s phone began offering him news items relating to red squirrels.

Another watershed moment was when I was driving to Kew Gardens using Google Maps on my phone.  I was listening to a Radio 4 play the final words of which were ‘It is finished.  I have arrived.’

Google Maps immediately switched itself off.  Which was annoying as I was just approaching a complicated roundabout.

It makes you wonder how much information these talking-and-listening devices have picked up and transmitted and to whom.  Are we effectively bugging ourselves?

My only comfort is imagining somebody in China or Russia scratching their head as they try to understand Nigel’s pun-based jokes.  I’m not sure I understand them myself.

PPE

Earlier in the week, I did some errands.

It was a muggy day, so not ideal, but I was keen to shift the books and clothes I had turned out during Lockdown.  Before I started deciding I had been rash and took them back again.  So I piled them into the boot.

I toured several charity shops.  Some were still closed.  Others were already full to the gunnels with donations.

All the time it was getting hotter and stickier.

I gave up and went to a small supermarket to get a few necessaries.  I scrabbled in my handbag for a mask and put it on.  I even put the blue side on the outside (a bit of etiquette which had previously escaped me).

As I followed the one-way route around Budgens I noticed not only that I was the only customer in a mask, but that other people were looking at me strangely.  I felt indignant – from next Friday EVERYBODY would have to wear masks.  It was ridiculous of them to stare.

As I returned to the car with my shopping, I caught sight of myself in the window.  Bang in the middle of my forehead was a lemon sherbert sweet wrapper.  It must have come out of my bag along with the mask and I’d been ‘wearing’ it all the way round Budgens.

I drove home.  My boot was still full of clothes and books, but at least I was laughing.

Big Wedding Anniversary

This Summer we were going to have a party.  Monday was our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and we thought we should celebrate with friends and family. 

In March, I was reproaching myself for being late in sending out our ‘save the date’s.

However, Covid quickly turned my tardiness into an advantage.  An anniversary party was one thing I did not have to rearrange.

It also changed my perspective.  What we had planned were large loud festivities.  What happened was very different.

Pascoe came to stay and the twins visited on Sunday (travelling by Zipp Car and socially-distanced from us).  The children gave us champagne & flowers.  I cooked a partially successful vegan quiche (‘Don’t worry – I’m sure it will taste delicious.’) which we ate in the garden.  Then we went for a long tramp around Heartwood and Nomansland where swathes of cornflowers glowed blue against the yellow lady’s bedstraw. We came back for summer pudding made from homegrown fruit (good except for the vintage saucer which had glued itself to the base of the pudding).

And after all the separation from one another, it was a hugely happy occasion to be together as a family once more.  And more than exciting enough.

Card by Carenza - Coral Anniversary

Sleeping Beauty

I have suffered during Lockdown from thinking I am ahead but discovering I am not.

Mostly it is a matter of time passing – Lockdown means the absence of the usual festivals and public holidays which punctuate the year.  Time slips through my fingers like water.  I always know which day of the week it is, owing to my work, but the months elude me.  How can it be that we are half way through the year?

When I interrogate my thinking, I can see that at some level I believe that time has stood still during Lockdown, as if in March I had pricked my finger on a spindle. 

It does not help that from the start of Lockdown and ever since, it has been Summer outside.

My plan in April was to complete my tax return at the soonest possible opportunity – it’s easier then to make sense of receipts and records and means it’s not hanging over me.

So I just did my tax return today.  Felt pleased with myself.  Then realised 3 months had somehow passed since I first resolved to complete it.  But on the upside, I’m still ahead of my usual performance.

Perhaps I should start thinking about Christmas now.  By the time I get round to doing something about it, the timing should be about right.

The pic above is a field of flax I walked through with Carol and Caroline - it should have made me realise it was high summer!

As Others See Us

Over the last three months, my phone has blossomed with photos of wildflowers, rippled with corn fields and been dappled with shady woods.

Now that Lockdown is easing, we have begun to meet friends for socially distanced walks.  Afterwards we have swapped photos and it has been very welcome to see people reappearing in my photo folder.  It is as if a very beautiful garden of Eden is gradually being populated.  

I have also found myself delighted to see Nigel and I popping up again.  As somebody else’s photo arrives via WhatsApp I have an urge to cry out ‘Look! It’s me!’

In the past, a photo of oneself could be a trophy – ‘Look – Here are Nigel and I visiting the Eiffel Tower’. 

But right at the moment, these pictures of us are proof of something more valuable – we have begun to see friends and family again.

The poet, Robert Burns said:

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"

(‘If only some Power would give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us!’)

I’m pretty sure he did not foresee the mobile phone camera, and he probably wasn’t talking about physical appearance either.  But even so, it’s the phrase that went through my head when Carenza sent us some pics at the weekend.

It is good to be back in my own photo folder again.