The importance of being real

Well, this has been my view for eight hours today. 420 miles of French roads at an average speed of just over 50 mph in an old diesel Landrover…

It’s made me think about my sense of self importance. I would never normally give myself time just to sit and think for eight hours. Even days off work have a list of things that must get done, and the truth is that there is never enough time. But today, all I could do was sit still as the countryside rolled by on shockingly expensive French toll roads.

Yesterday I had a problem. I realised I had not activated ‘roaming’ on my mobile phone, so I could not receive any texts that my family sent me. I asked my wife to ring the mobile provider and activate it for me. She did, but they wouldn’t. Apparently only I can do it, even though she knows the answers to all my security questions. I had to ring them from France and do it myself… which is easier said than done. I tried and failed and was a bit stuck. When talking to my son on Skype he suggested that he ring the mobile operator free on his PAYG phone, as he’s on the same network, and then put the phone on loudspeaker next to the computer. I was about to dismiss the idea; I was tired and did not really want to bother, when I realised I had nothing to lose by trying and lots to gain.

It worked - what a strange world we live in, though, where I can sit in France on a free internet link to England and talk to someone in India on a free mobile phone call.

I have reflected on that today. Why should me being tired make me assume that only I can come up with solutions to my problems, and that a boy can’t do what I can’t do. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t get more done if I tried to do less.

Ironically the man from India reinforced this. He turned on my roaming feature and then informed me of the charges. £14.02 per minute to receive a call in France, he said and £28.08 to make one.

"Surely not?" I queried, I was sure it should be less than that. Several times he asked me why I thought he would lie to me. This was his job, he knew the figures. Then I found the website for the phone company. I assured him that it was probably just me being confused, but asked him to clarify why the website said it was 14.2 and 28.8 pence respectively. He had to go and find out, but did find out that the website was right and he was wrong. Mildly frustrating, but not a big issue. It helped me today in reflecting that there are often things that get seen better by those who have a looser grip on the value of their own insight.

Now to try and live it...