Communication is the key.

Since Kim is away in the UK visiting Alyson, our daughter, I have been more than usually reliant on communication methods to keep in touch with her. Today we are really spoilt for choice. I can use the computer to send E-Mails, chat on Facebook, send pictures on Facebook status. I can send SMS messages or voice communications  on the mobile, I can use the ligne fixe telephone. If our computer was more up-to-date and our connection less hit-or-miss, I could use Skype or even send video.  More prosaically  i could even write a letter.  She can read this blog to keep in touch.
  It wasn`t always so. Just after we bought this house 20 years ago, Kim decided that, if she was to learn French properly and to test that she could survive alone in France, she should spend a few weeks here after I had to return to recommence work. We were confined to two ways of contact, letters or telephone; and at first we didn`t even have the phone installed, She had to ring from a call box. Mobiles were not in general use then, and were the size of a house-brick. Even after we had the phone installed, we used it sparingly once or twice a week but wrote almost daily. There was a strange problem of different time zones. A letter gave news which was a week old while the phone gave today`s news. Duplication was inevitable, rather disorientating...Things have changed so much in 20 years! It`s comforting to be in close touch.
   There was one other means but it was highly unreliable. At the time we were very much into CB radio. I suppose it still exists but it has been largely superseded by more modern media. We had a set in the Volkswagen camper and another in the house. In theory, the system had a range of about 5 miles but due to a phenomenon known as skip it could establish a tenuous contact over much greater distances.
    We really liked our CB sets and made many good friends.If I was out locally in the car I could call home where Kim kept a listening watch on the 38 band.  In Plymouth, the 38 frequency band was used by somewhat older CBers and supervised by a sort of honorary controller called Captain Bligh. I would explain that for security reasons nobody used his proper name on air but a call identity. I was Brown Bear,  Kim was Dragon Lady for example. No, this was not in allusion to her character, but to her Welsh upbringing! Another Celtic lady had already bagged `Welsh Dragon`. Capt. Bligh kept order and enforced radio discipline by sheer force of character, and a wicked sense of humour. Bless him, he`s dead long ago but still fondly remembered.
  Today there are almost too many means of keeping in contact but that must be a good thing.  Mustn`t it?


     Bye for now, got to check Facebook for messages...