The spider and the fly

On holiday, I went semi-voluntarily unplugged. Not being near a computer to look at e-mails or the internet was easy enough for two weeks, but I also became disconnected from the mobile phone when the wretched thing stubbornly refused to have any reception from the moment I landed at Vancouver airport. (I must ask T-Mobile about that: my husband's phone seemed to have no problems...strange.)

Anyway, once I had got used to the idea, I felt a wonderful sense of freedom and release. I asked myself: why is it assumed, these days, that you have to be connected, that you have to have your network at your fingertips, that you have to be "in touch"?

I think a lot of us kid ourselves. We think we're spiders, spinning our wonderful complex nets and webs, in full control, at the centre of things. But away from it all, I realised that I am often just a poor fly, caught up, buzzing helplessly in a sticky, suffocating net of someone else's making.