Why do I call these postings Tales from the Digital Slow Lane? Let’s start at the beginning…

You need to know where I live. It’s in a rural part of the UK called East Anglia. That’s the sticky out bit approximately 100 miles and 20 years from London.

If you approach my village from the North, along the charmingly-named Triple Plea Lane, you inevitably find yourself playing chicken with the kamikaze pheasants that lurk in the hedgerows and delight in running in front of your car – causing you to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of your day.

If you approach my village from the West, near to the equally charmingly-named Misery Corner, you all too often find yourself playing chicken with the kamikaze cattle that have escaped from their pens and loom out of the early morning mists in front of your car – causing you to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of your day.

These cattle are such good escape artists – and their death-wish so deeply ingrained – that on one, now legendary, occasion they escaped overnight – route-marched 15 miles due west – safely crossed the dual carriageway section of a major road – found their way onto the tracks of the main railway line into London – and then ran out into the path of an approaching express train. Thereby causing the driver to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of the day for the tens of thousands of commuters at stations further down the line, whose journeys into work were delayed while the emergency services cleared away mess – and what remained of the cattle. Better make that the dearly departed and pretty much rendered in hamburger patties cattle. They didn’t call out a veterinary surgeon, they called in McDonalds.

If you approach my village from the East, along a long, winding, narrow country lane, there are no stray animals to trouble your journey. This is because they have already been turned into roadkill by crazy, homicidal little old ladies – and when I say little, I mean they are so small and shrivelled that when you first see them approach you think there is nobody in the vehicle – but then you spot their wrinkly faces peering vacantly out through the gap between the dashboard and the top of the steering wheel. Crazy, homicidal little old ladies who drive their cars at unfeasibly fast speeds down the middle of the road, forcing everyone else to take violent evasive action, breaking, swerving, skidding to avoid them and generally ruining the rest of your day.

Not surprisingly, my favourite route into the village is now from the South. There are no kamikaze animals nor crazy, homicidal little old ladies to worry about. Instead, it takes me by the home of The Very Famous Author Who Had One Of His Books Turned Into A Hollywood Movie Starring Nicolas Cage. And then on past the village church – where the clock on the tower is always 23 minutes slow.

There again, it may be the clock on the tower is correct and that the whole village occupies a time-zone 23 minutes askew from the rest of the world?

Perhaps that why we still celebrate wassailing – look it up on Google or Wikipedia – in a fortnight’s time with molly dancers – look them up on Google or Wikipedia. Or, as the landlord of a local pub said – and I’m quoting from a newspaper report: “Out here we know that you dismiss the old ways and celebrating the turn of the seasons at your peril…” Although he then spoiled things by going on to plug the beers, soups and food his pub would be selling on the night.