Adventures in Wifi

On our summer travels, it was very difficult to remain connected to the internet world we are accustomed to when we're at home. Now I don't mind this. Apart from this blog, which I like to keep up, I am perfectly happy to revert to a non-social media, non-browsing lifestyle and just read books for entertainment; or go for walks; or paint the boat; or....you get the idea, anyway. I love that feeling of detachment from the 'real world'.

My dearest and beloved, however, is less sanguine about being off-grid, so to speak. His passion is photography, and next to that is his passion for sharing his photos with others. Yes, even when we are in remote and sleepy parts of the French countryside and access is almost interdit (a very common French instruction), let alone impossible. Well, I shall say no more about that for fear of reprisals (haha), but I do want to tell you about some of the adventures he had in attempting to break the barriers of French internet resistance.

The man with his passion

Technically, it should all have been very simple. When in France, you can buy an abonnement for a limited period to connect with the internet by means of hotspots. In Koos' case, this was with Orange, who claimed to have something like 700,000 hotspots throughout the country. How this works, though, is not quite so easy and I hope I can explain it. There are indeed huge numbers of hotspots, but they are not in comfortable, easy locations like cafés or bars. Oh no.

When a householder organises broadband Internet at home, he/she agrees that, for a reduced monthly fee, passing members of the public can use a small part of his/her bandwidth, thus making his/her home  or premises a hotspot. There are lots of companies offering this throughout Europe, so it is nothing unusual. In the Netherlands, for example, we have KPN Fon and many others. What it means in practice, though, is that anyone with an abonnement such as the one Koos bought needs to be close to the said premises to make use of the hotspot.

Well, I think a lot of people are not fully aware that their homes might be the centre of such 'hot' attention, so to speak. So what happened was this:

Koos bought his abonnement when we were in Douai, but only discovered then how close he had to be to the nearby hotspot to get a connection. In Douai, it wasn't too bad. There was a garden bench on the road opposite the block of flats where the happy, probably unsuspecting, subscriber lived. He would trek up to the bench with his laptop and sit there uploading photos and checking in with his followers. Barring a few odd looks, nobody paid him much attention. After all, what's so odd about a man with a laptop these days? Just an oversized phone, you might say. However, when we moved up the Scarpe away from the urban world, connecting with the world proved more difficult.

Flats in Douai: which one is home to the hostpsot?

At our first stop, Koos walked into the village of Brébieres some distance from the boat, wandered around with his laptop open until he found a hotspot (as anyone would, of course), found a convenient bench (he wasn't always so lucky) and sat down. All of a sudden, life became interesting. A woman had collapsed not far from where he was sitting and was being attended to by anxious friends. She herself was cheerfully chatting on her phone when the ambulance arrived, but seeing Koos on the bench, they pulled up to him first.

'Are you ze one who called for us?' they asked, for all the world as if they were a taxi service.
'No, not me. Her,' said Koos, pointing to the prostrate lady with a smile. She was still talking and laughing on her phone.
'Oh merci monsieur.' And off they went to rescue the real victim. Koos could only imagine they saw his grey hair and beard and just assumed it must have been him, despite his calm demeanour and open laptop. A youngish woman lying flat on the ground? No...it couldn't have been her.

On another occasion, he had to sit on someone's front step to find the magic hotspot. Luckily, the house was closed up, but I cringed with embarrassment on his behalf with this one, although not half as much as I did on a later occasion at Cappy on the Somme. Once again, he was obliged to sit outside someone's house. It was early evening and the blinds were down so he felt safe that the owners were not at home. Unfortunately, though, they arrived back when he was in mid-upload.

Cappy on the Somme

Now Koos has a gift I don't have. I would have felt as guilty as a criminal even though what he was doing was perfectly legal and fully paid for. Koos has no such handicap and proceeded to explain to the bemused householders how the hotspot system worked - in fluent French. My daughter called him a silver tongued charmer the first time she met him, and I am guessing he had to bring the full load of his easy charm to the fore to avoid serious misunderstandings on this occasion. I know I would have failed hopelessly, especially in French!

As you can see, there's a bit of an actor
in my Koos - very useful on such
occasions :)

Apart from these, there were other, even less comfortable hotspots: the dodgy side street in Haubourdin where I was afraid he wouldn't come home with his laptop, if at all and the church square in Marquette-lez-Lille under the eagle eye of the Lord. Most notably, though, he had to get up close and cosy with a lamp post in Leers Noord. Yes. Can you imagine trying to explain that one? 'Yes, officer, I'm getting messages from the aliens. This lamp-post is their earthly antenna.'

So next time you see someone lurking with intent with an open laptop next to a postbox, garden hedge or shop door, don't worry...it's probably Koos. Just ask him what he's doing and experience all that silver he's capable of conjuring up at a moment's notice and enjoy it. He's quite an actor, but totally harmless really :)

NOTE: Due to the problems my readers have had with overcoming the 'I am not a robot' captcha if they are not Google account holders, I have enabled comment moderation for all comments. I'm really really sorry I've had to do this, but at least readers won't have the frustration of jumping through hoops to publish a comment. I will check daily to ensure all comments are published.