Three Steps to Heaven

The "Show Allotment" in town. Anyone can pick the veg for free

The nice people at Three (my phone network) must have known it was my birthday this week and decided to give me what I always wanted - 3G on my land! Ever since I arrived here four years ago I have been making do with 2G, the old-fashioned network that allows just calls and texts.

Like all the best gifts, it was a total surprise. I was just going about my watering of seedlings, it being as dry here in Wales as the rest of the nation, when my phone made this little bleep that wasn't a text or an event reminder. It was a Facebook message notification. Facebook requires internet. Internet requires 3G. I got it out and checked the screen. There was the icon at the top of the screen, and next to it the signal indicator with a telltale H, short for HSPA (the souped-up 3G, no less.)

My hotbed in the polytunnel has tomato seedlings, sweetcorn, basil, cucumber, patty-pan squash and more

OK so it's not 4G. I'm not quite up there with you city folk yet, streaming Netflix videos whilst you Snapchat each other clips of your pets falling off things. But 3G will do me just fine. I'll be able to check emails from my caravan, or research how much to water asparagus, all there and then on my phone.

Hang on though. It's not going to be the same, is it? I'll be less off-grid now, and more contactable than I have been for some time. If I'm going to be interrupted by some inane status update as I plant out my bean seedlings, what passes for my train of thought will be broken and I'll lose that zen-like serenity I've been so carefully cultivating.

Runner bean "Lady Di"

I will need to tweak the notification settings to a massive OFF to ensure Facebook is put back in its place, a simple app that will only speak when it's spoken to. Ditto with the mail app. Or I could go all-out and do the unthinkable: switch the darn thing off.

The gamekeepers came today and fixed the garden's fenceposts that were broken or leaning in