Suzanne Harrington: Downward dog trip stretches digital detox

You know when you take teenagers somewhere amazing — a breath-taking mountain, an astonishing beach, a bucolic idyll — and they fall to the floor, wailing, because there is no wifi? Reader, I am that teenager.

I have no wifi. Through every fault of my own, I have no wifi. I have taken myself to a remote place, far from real life in a distant time zone, for yoga reasons.

There, the wifi is turned off, apart from one hour a day, so that guests will remain in the present, rather than Instagramming their downward dogs or squabbling remotely with faraway family members. But during this one hour of permitted wifi, four hundred people crowd around the router, and there’s only so much weak signal to go around. Gnashing of teeth ensues.

Reader, I still have no wifi.

It’s not like I actually need it. Obviously, I invent excuses as to why I do — not being able to WhatsApp the kidults back home (who tend to barely respond, other than when they want cash transfers); not being able to WhatsApp the dog (so she can tell me via sad eyes how much she’s missing me); not being able to share infuriating photos of tropical sunsets as everyone shivers back home (because this is what the internet is for).

But the truth is I do not need wifi. I just want it, miss it, crave it like a twenty-a-day smoker going cold turkey.

It feels weird, being so disconnected. Like a limb gone numb, or being temporarily struck dumb. Roaming data costs too much, and actual phone calls are only for when someone is dead.Nobody is dead, nor is there any pressing need to impart vital information; there are no hijacked planes to be talked down from the control tower, or mountain rescues to be co-ordinated. I just want to mindlessly scroll through my feeds in between yoga marathons, instead of reading ancient texts on spiritual development. Reader, I am desperate for wifi.

It takes a week to crack. Not crack through the addiction, to become liberated and reincarnated as post-digital. No. Crack as in temporarily check out of the yoga jail, hail a rickshaw, and travel to the nearest point of digital civilisation. Pay a man in a dusty little kiosk to insert a local sim, hovering nervously as he does neurosurgery on my phone. Ping! Finally, it is done. I am reconnected.

The screen bleeps, flashes, vibrates, inboxes flood. News from everywhere. Sinn Féin’s success, Trump’s acquittal, Storm Ciara, Philip Schofield. The Corona virus in a Brighton hospital five minutes from my house. I sent a flurry of anxious texts, begging the kidults not to catch it, to remain vigilant as the contagion inches ever closer: they reply sarcastically, promising not to lick any strangers. In the rickshaw back to my place of yogic incarceration, a barrage of texts, emails, messages continue to download, all demanding replies. I realise I have made a terrible mistake. Reader, I no longer want wifi. Or data. Or even a phone.