On being connected.

On Desert Island Discs this morning Ray Mears, adventurer, writer, TV presenter, general outdoorsy type, said he liked to go out exploring with just a map and a compass. Going out without GPS or other similar devices was a condition he described as being “de-assimilated from the cyber-hive”. What a wonderful expression! 

Yesterday in our living room we had our own little cyber-hive: daughter ordering her groceries online, her partner busy on his iPad and three grandchildren all playing a variety of electronic games. Surprisingly, we do still talk to each other at times! 

At present I feel a little “de-assimilated from the cyber-hive”. OK, I exaggerate; I still have the computer and the iPad, my new toy, to keep me happy, not to mention the trusty Kindle. But I am still mobile-less and it feels very odd to go out completely without instant communication devices. How quickly we grow accustomed to being in touch instantaneously. 

I do now have a new sim card for the iPhone so kindly donated by my granddaughter and I have taken the necessary steps to change the number to my old mobile number. However, when my daughter handed the device over to us she neglected to ask her daughter, who now has the latest model iPhone, to reset the thing to “factory settings”, i.e. to wipe out all her stuff and any passwords and so on. To do this after the event has proved complicated and is going to involve both my daughter and granddaughter speaking to the Apple people in order to get round the various security settings. My technophobia is, naturally, way up at the top of its settings!! Definitely time to “de-assimilate from the cyber-hive”. 

However, I do like that expression and will add it to my collection. The people of O Carballiño in Galicia are trying to add a word to the official vocabulary of the Galician Language. They are asking the Real Academia Galega to accept “pulpo” as a “galego” word, alongside the “polbo” which the traditionalists insist is Galician for octopus. The thing is that the good folk of O Carballiño have been having an octopus festival for more than fifty years and have been calling it “a festa do pulpo” and they don’t see why they should change it to “a festa do polbo”. Good luck to them, say I. There are people who say (and write about it at length) that whatever people say should be accepted as correct use of language. I can’t say I totally agree with that but then I’m a bit of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to grammatical correctness. Vocabulary, though, is a different matter. I rather suspect that as time goes on it will be increasingly hard to keep “galego” traditionally pure. 

Meanwhile, today in Galicia, and in the rest of Spain, processions will be going on to celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings, bringing presents to good girls and boys and loads of sweets for the children watching the processions. 

 I hope they don’t get blown away by the storms. Here’s a link to a weather report from La Voz de Galicia. As I watched the video of a cruise ship going into La Coruña I found myself feeling sorry for the tourists on board. It can’t be much fun rolling around in the heavy seas at the moment. Just imagine: you book yourself onto a cruise to escape the winter weather and find yourself in the middle of that! 

According to reports I have read, the storms in Galicia are the tail end of the weather systems that have been hitting the UK. These in turn have been caused by the cold weather in the USA which has made the Jetstream colder, pushing cold currents of air across to us and playing havoc with our weather. This is all part of the interconnectedness of everything. A Physics teacher friend of mine must be feeling quite smug about this as he has gone on and on about this topic for years. Mind you, I don’t think he was really thinking about the weather. 

Here in Saddleworth, we have once again come off lightly, somehow avoiding the worst excesses of the weather. We have even been able to get out occasionally and catch a little winter sunshine. This involves Phil stopping from time to time to turn his face up to the sky to catch the sun’s rays, something he studiously avoids in the summer!!