Logging Off

by Spalding, Nick

  I say it’s easy . . . but I’m still having a huge problem with it today, such is my discombobulated state of mind.

  This must be what smokers feel like when they quit. Or heavy drinkers.

  Bloody hell.

  Can I really be that bad?

  Can I really have developed such an addiction to the online space that being off it for even just a few hours makes me crazy?

  The answer to that is clearly yes, when I discover that the pie I’ve been drawing for the past hour on my graphics tablet looks more like a dog turd. A big, brown dog turd with steam rising off it.

  ‘Aaargh!’ I exclaim in frustrated disgust, throwing my stylus down and rubbing my face with both hands.

  I need to get out of the house and go for a walk. That’ll calm me down a bit.

  And, for an hour or so, it actually does.

  I am able to take a few deep breaths as I walk along the pretty canal path that’s only a five-minute drive from my flat.

  I’m not even that bothered when I spot a large, abandoned dog turd that looks just like my latest attempt to draw a pie.

  However, I become extremely bothered when I spot a black cloud overhead. I’m bothered because I hate getting wet when I’m out and about, and usually take every measure available to me to avoid it happening.

  This, of course, usually includes looking at the four separate weather apps I have on my phone, to check whether I need to get undercover or not in the near future.

  But now I have no way of knowing if that black cloud is going to bugger off, or dump its contents on me in no uncertain terms.

  Given the day I’m having, it’s no surprise that it chooses the latter of the two options, and my pleasant, relaxing walk is destroyed when I have to sprint a good half-mile back to the car in the pouring bloody rain.

  I cut what you could only describe as a highly miserable figure, as I sit clutching my steering wheel and gently dripping all over the interior of my Volvo.

  Does rainwater stain car upholstery?

  Who knows!

  Certainly not me!

  Not without the bloody Internet to check!

  The drive back to the flat is conducted with sulphurous swearing going on under my breath. The dread from this morning and the frustrations from work have now bonded in an unholy union of barely contained apoplectic rage.

  I screech the car to a halt in my parking space. I slam the car door so loudly it makes a nearby cat run for cover. I stamp up the stairs to my flat, drizzling the tiles with rainwater as I go.

  Back inside, I decide to make myself an angry cup of coffee. This is much like a normal cup of coffee, only it contains twice the amount of coffee, three times the amount of sugar and a quarter of the amount of milk.

  Imagine – just try to imagine – the absolute fury that consumes my being when I realise I’m out of instant coffee.

  ‘Fuck!’ I scream.

  And I can’t use Amazon bastard Prime bastard Now to order any more, like I usually do. Yesterday, I could have had a fresh jar of the good stuff delivered to my door within the hour, along with whatever other goodies I felt like impulse-buying at the same time.

  But oh no.

  Now I have to go back out of the bastard flat, get back in my bastard car and drive to the bastard shops to buy bastard coffee.

  It appears being denied my right to the World Wide Web has turned me into a right potty mouth.

  Bollocks.

  There’s nothing else fucking for it – I’m going to have to go back out in the rain, just to pick up some Nescafé.

  I storm over to the front door and fling it open with an audible grunt.

  This absolutely terrifies my best friend, Fergus, who was just about to knock on the door.

  ‘Fuck me!’ he screams, and stumbles backwards.

  ‘Fergus?!’ I exclaim, in shock and anger.

  The last thing I need right now is to have to talk to anyone. Anyone except the cashier at Tesco when I pick up my coffee, that is.

  ‘You scared me half to bloody death!’ he cries, hand clutched to his chest.

  ‘Sorry,’ I reply, through gritted teeth.

  Oh great, that’s bound to set off the lockjaw again, isn’t it?

  ‘What the hell’s the matter? You look like you’re about to chew your way through the brickwork.’

  Fergus, as you will soon discover, has something of a way with words. It’s what makes him a good journalist, and a fascinating conversation companion.

  Usually I love to spend a good few hours talking to him about whatever the salient topic of the day is. Fergus is just about the only person I actually converse with offline, I think.

  Not today, though. I don’t want to talk to him today.

  Today I am a one-man wrecking crew, and not to be trifled with.

  ‘Sorry,’ I repeat. ‘I’m not in the best of moods.’

  ‘Best of moods?’ he replies, incredulous. ‘I’ve seen happier-looking cows going to slaughter. What the hell’s going on? What’s got your goat?’

  I shake my head. ‘It’d take too long to explain.’

  ‘Does it have anything to do with why you missed the party last night?’

  My heart drops like a stone as I realise what I’ve done. ‘Oh God! I’m so sorry, mate! I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Have become an unconvincing pirate impressionist?’

  ‘No! I . . . I’m just . . . not doing all that great at the moment, Ferg . . . and I just . . . forgot, mate. I’m really sorry!’

  ‘Yes, I thought you probably would be. Not like you to miss a social event. It was on Facebook.’

  I feel my jaw tightening again. ‘Yes. That’s part of the fucking problem.’

  ‘Maybe I should have ordered you a chauffeur-driven limousine as well, but I figured you could have arranged your own transport, being a fully grown adult and all that.’

  ‘I really am super sorry, Ferg.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve said that.’ Fergus gives me a concerned, curious look. ‘I only popped round to check you hadn’t died and been eaten by cats . . . but now I see what state you’re obviously in, I think I should take you for a nice cup of coffee somewhere, so you can explain to me just why you missed your best friend’s glorious promotional celebrations.’

  I consider this for a moment.

  On the one hand, I’m still pretty damn enraged, and unwanting of human companionship.

  On the other, I do want coffee. And I do feel bad about missing Fergus’s party.

  I nod my head. ‘Right. OK then. Coffee it is.’

  ‘Good.’ Fergus cocks his head. ‘Why are you so wet? Did you get caught out in the rain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fergus chuckles. ‘That’s not like you. You’re usually right on the ball with the weather. Did your phone run out of battery?’

  It takes me a superhuman amount of effort not to collapse on the floor in a screaming, childish tantrum at this point. I’d better get out of the flat and get some coffee down my neck as quickly as possible.

  Fergus Brailsworth is a man possessed of both a fabulous name and a very creative turn of phrase. We’ve been friends for the past four years, ever since we met while I was freelancing at the local paper he works for.

  The Daily Local News is possibly the most boringly named newspaper in human history – and is something of a relic of a bygone age.

  It only continues to exist because we have a healthy contingent of the older generation in our neck of the woods, who still enjoy having the paper delivered to them every day. Also, Fergus’s uncle Barrington Brailsworth (yes, I know – it’s incredible, isn’t it?) owns the paper, and has more money than he comfortably knows what to do with.

  What he does with it is ploughs it consistently into the Daily Local News – keeping the paper afloat in an environment where more of them die off every day, and his nephew Fergus in a job.

  Not that there’s much nepotism going on there. Fergus is immensely talented. Something both
he and his uncle are well aware of. Barrington pays Fergus extremely well, to make sure Fergus doesn’t leave for greener pastures. In return, Fergus keeps the local news stories rolling in, managing to put an interesting twist on even the dullest of subject matters. He once wrote a two-thousand-word article about a man who had grown a marrow that vaguely resembled Bruce Forsyth. It won awards.

  His rampant success has led to Barrington giving Fergus a well-deserved promotion at the paper – hence the party I missed out on, because my life (unlike Fergus’s) has become an uncoordinated mess.

  I should also point out that Fergus is enormously ginger. He was born with a perfectly acceptable blond head of hair, but you can’t be named Fergus without becoming ginger at some stage. It’s the fifth law of thermodynamics, and the universe wouldn’t function properly without it.

  ‘Flat white?’ he asks as I plonk myself down angrily in a chair.

  ‘Yes please,’ I tell him, chewing on one fingernail as I do so.

  Look!

  Look at all the people in here who are using their mobile phones!

  The broadband in Costa is always pretty good, and the place is a mecca for those seeking fast, free Wi-Fi and a hot caffeine injection.

  Look at them all!

  Surfing the Internet. Looking at Twitter. Playing Candy Crush.

  The lucky, lucky bastards!

  I have only been offline for twenty hours, and I’m already insanely jealous of everybody else in the world.

  ‘Why are you staring at that bloke with the iPad like you want to do horrible things upon his person?’ Fergus asks, brows knitted.

  I look up at him sharply.

  ‘He’s on the Internet. I can just tell,’ I spit.

  Fergus looks over at the inoffensive member of the public, before looking back at me. There’s a suspicion dawning in his eyes, and I feel like he’s about to make an accurate intuitive leap.

  ‘You’re angry that he’s on the Internet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re . . . not, I see.’

  ‘No. I am not.’

  Fergus’s eyes narrow. ‘There’s something fundamental going on here, and I am most keen for you to elucidate further, but I fear I should not ask more until I have placed milky coffee into your hands.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Hold that thought, then. I shall return promptly.’

  Fergus turns and hurries over to the counter. He knows I have a story to tell, and nothing gets Fergus’s dander up more than someone with a story to tell.

  Well, that and being able to justifiably use the word ‘dander’ in an article. He’d be intensely jealous if I showed him that last sentence.

  While he’s gone, I think about what exactly I’m going to say to him about it. Should I be completely honest? Should I tell Fergus everything? Including the emergency poo and the penis-holding dream?

  He’s my best friend – and my only friend out here in the real world, if I’m being honest – but do I want to give him all the gory details? Can I trust him to keep them to himself? After all, we’re talking about someone whose most natural instincts are to spread any interesting stories they hear as far and as wide as possible.

  He’d probably do it on the Internet, a horrible voice in my head tells me.

  Yes, he probably bloody would. And all of the people in this Costa would see it if he did, wouldn’t they? Because look at them, would you? Look how they gaze upon the might of the World Wide Web, accessing information from all corners of the globe. See the looks of happy concentration on their faces as they engage with mankind’s greatest creation!

  I’ve clearly lost all sense of perspective at this point. Not being allowed on the web for a whole day has left me with a warped sense of its benefit to society.

  While I am quite happy to wax lyrical about the Internet’s joys, I am deliberately forgetting about all of its shortcomings. The way it lets truly awful people have more of a voice than they ever should have. The way it turns societies against each other, and drops us all into our own silos, where we never communicate constructively with those we disagree with. Things of that nature.

  And then there’s Kim Kardashian . . .

  She wouldn’t have a career without the Internet and social media. Surely that’s the web’s greatest crime, isn’t it?

  Right now, though, none of those things are at the forefront of my thinking. Right now, I am like someone who has given up smoking, who only misses the buzz and the taste, and completely disregards the smell and the risk of cancer.

  The guy with the iPad is smiling and tapping one finger on the screen. He’s happy. I am not. This is the absolute, inescapable fact of the matter.

  I feel my jaw start to clench, and don’t even bother to try to stop it.

  ‘One flat white,’ Fergus announces, placing the cup in front of me. ‘Please drink up, and stop looking at that poor chap like you want to remove his tongue with red-hot forceps.’

  I glower at Fergus, but do as I’m bid.

  The coffee does go some way to calming my inner turmoil. This should be something of an oxymoron, given that caffeine is a stimulant, but my mind is extremely topsy-turvy at the moment so it makes a strange kind of sense . . . if you don’t think about it too much.

  ‘Well then,’ Fergus says, regarding me solemnly. ‘Clearly something has got your goat. I’d go so far as to say it looks like your goat has been stolen, was sent to the nearest abattoir and is now hanging in a butcher’s window somewhere. Spill, Mr Bellows. I need to know why you missed my lovely party, and why you have a face like the arse end of the same dead goat, before we go any further.’ The slightly wry smile drops off his face. ‘Look, in all seriousness, I was gutted you didn’t turn up, mate. It’s not like you. What the hell’s going on?’

  I sigh.

  Might as well get this over and done with. Fergus won’t be happy until I’ve told him the whole story. And I have decided not to skip anything. He’d only wheedle it out of me anyway. That’s the way he is.

  The article about the Bruce Forsyth marrow won as many awards as it did because it was really a very in-depth story about the man behind the marrow – a gentleman with a sad and tumultuous past, involving an unfaithful wife, a stolen inheritance and connections to the Italian mafia.

  That’s what Fergus does. He opens people up like he’s a psychological can opener. Gets them to spill their guts all over the place. The reason he’s such a good journalist is that he knows that the real story is always about the person – never the marrow.

  I consume two flat whites during the course of my sorry tale. By the time I’m finished, I have dropped into a far calmer state of mind, thanks to the combination of the finest Colombian coffee beans and sweet, silky cow’s milk.

  ‘And that’s why I wasn’t at the party. I’ve been consumed by my health problems, and the bloody digital detox. I never saw any of the reminders you sent, because I haven’t been online. Again . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t there.’

  Fergus sips the last of his own coffee as he regards me over the rim of the cup.

  ‘Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?’ I ask, curious at his silence.

  ‘I will. I’m just evaluating.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘To be honest with you, I’d say a digital detox is just what you need.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Indeed. It’s clear from your general demeanour today that being offline is the source of much psychological distress.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Which rather indicates that it’s become something you’re altogether too reliant on.’ He pauses for a second in thought, before continuing. ‘Mind you, I could have told you that much anyway. I’ve known you long enough to know how addicted you are to it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh my, yes. Frankly, I’m still trying to get used to the idea of seeing you without a phone in your hand. You’ve made more eye contact with m
e today than you have during our entire friendship. There have been times in the past I’ve felt like I’ve been holding a conversation with Siri more than Andy Bellows.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ I reply hoarsely. Realising you have an issue is one thing; finding out that other people have been aware of it long before you were is quite another.

  ‘Not a chance,’ Fergus replies with a smile. ‘I want to see how this all turns out.’

  I sit back with my arms folded. ‘Well, you’re not going to, because I’m not going through with it.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘Nope. Fuck it. As soon as we leave here, I’m going home and getting everything out of the box again.’

  I arrived at this decision about halfway through telling Fergus about what’s been happening to me over the past few days.

  I don’t care how much my jaw hurts, or how tight my neck feels; I cannot and will not go through the next sixty days in the kind of foul mood I am currently in. That horrid feeling of disconnection is just too much.

  I will try my level best not to go online as much, but there’s no way I’m cutting it out of my life completely. I just can’t do it. I don’t want to spend the next two months angry, frustrated, antsy and twitchy.

  ‘Antsy and twitchy mean the same thing,’ Fergus tells me.

  ‘Oh, bugger off.’

  ‘So, that’s it then? You’re just going to give up?’

  ‘Yes! Yes I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shake my head and look at him in disgust. ‘What do you mean, why? I told you why! It’s too hard!’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . .’ I look around at the people on their phones. ‘Because I can’t do what they’re doing!’

  Fergus also looks at them. ‘And what are they doing?’

  ‘Having fun!’

  He raises one eyebrow. ‘They don’t look like they’re having that much fun to me. Those two girls in the corner could be talking to one another, but instead they’re hunched over their phones. That old boy in the other corner is clearly having problems trying to get his stupid phone to work in the first place, and matey-boy on the iPad there might be smiling, but there’s a haunted look in his eyes that speaks volumes.’