The other day the gremlins struck, “not single spies but in battalions”. Within the space of 24 hours my mobile phone (of antique vintage, heavy, solid and until now reliable) died, we had a power cut, and the car packed up.

The morning without power or mobile phone was extraordinarily peaceful. I realised what I was missing by going to the computer first thing in the morning to be connected – to what? I was going to say to the day, the world and my work, but it would be to a very limited version of all three.

Quiet reigned in the house, without the urgent chatter of the Today programme or the ring of any phone (our landline phones, being electric cordless ones, were also silenced by the power failure). Peace was broken by an argument, when I complained that I had some arrangements to make that required the phone and the computer, and Ching Ling accused me of being addicted to the new technologies I spend so much time railing against.

Nothing could be further from the truth, I protested; I have spent my life immersed in, and promoting the cause of, poetry and music and nature, all of which can be appreciated with the minimum of technology. I would be happy spending the whole morning practising a Beethoven sonata, or sitting in the garden watching the sparrows and great tits. But I probably protested too much.

Later that day we set off in the car to visit my parents who live 30 miles away in the countryside. We chose the wrong moment, the middle of a violent thunderstorm with torrential rain. As usual when it rains in London, we got stuck in a traffic jam.

After a while, clouds of steam started to rise, not from between my ears but from the car radiator. I pulled in to the side of the main road out of west London and we called on the rescue services of the Automobile Association (using Ching Ling’s mobile, a beacon of constancy in a dysfunctional world).

Nothing happened. That is to say, the AA (or to be more accurate their subcontractor) did not arrive, not at the time promised, nor, after I had rung them again, at the time rescheduled. Cars crawled past us in the long queue to the Acton bridges, passengers gawping either with the curiosity born of boredom, or with Schadenfreude, or, who knows, even in some cases with sympathy. A police patrol vehicle pitched up and told me to move on to the grass verge.

But this “nothing happening” began to take on an interesting dimension. It was certainly more challenging than the short bounded stretches of time I have sometimes described in this column, waiting for a train or at an airport.

We were stranded interminably, waiting for the Godot-like breakdown service, without even the messenger boy or the strange arrivals of Lucky and Pozzo.

In some respects we were luckier than Beckett’s tramps. In my rucksack were provisions; some slices of excellent prosciutto and half a loaf of bread just purchased from the local deli; a box of Bendicks’ mints (intended as a gift for my parents, but needs must); and a book, Lucy Wadham’s amusing memoir of her relationship with France and a Frenchman.

Omar Khayyam, or at least Edward Fitzgerald’s version of him, would surely have approved: “Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,/ A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou/ Beside me singing in the Wilderness –/ And Wilderness is Paradise enow.” As we tucked into the bread and prosciutto I did think for a moment, wistfully, about the cool glass of Mosel Kabinett I knew my father would have waiting – but it was only for a moment.

We were enjoying a picnic by the roadside – not a planned one, and not a road I would normally have chosen. In earlier days I often drove along this stretch of what Osbert Lancaster called By-Pass Variegated marvelling at its ugliness, arrogantly wondering how people could live in such surroundings. Now I could make amends, appreciating the efforts of local gardeners, and even the road landscapers, who had planted a thick hedge of hebe, hearing the full fluting of the blackbirds, watching the Messerschmidt dashes of the swifts.

Normal service was, of course, quite quickly restored (though not by the AA – we eventually made it back home under our own, thankfully reduced steam, leaving Godot to his own devices). Power returned; the radio was soon chattering again and the phones at their noisy business of interruption and persecution.

Questions came back, too. Would we be better off if we were less plugged in, or perhaps more to the point, why does it take breakdown and disconnection to achieve an opening up to the world? We can survive the odd morning without electricity and evening of being marooned; we might even enjoy it. Could we revive the old idea of a day of rest and joyful unplugging, the day once called the Sabbath?

harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres