I'm making an effort to use digital technology more intentionally, and that needs to include periods when I don't use it at all. The rest of the time I have a range of tools to support my intention, including Minimalist Phone launcher, application scheduling, turning off notifications, all the things the self-help books would tell you to do. Of course I'm not on social media, unless Geminispace is that.
Yesterday I had a digital sabbath in the afternoon and sat down to do just one thing, to listen to the radio. Not to have the radio on in the background while I browsed here or on Wikipedia, nor to allow my mind to wander and to immediately search anything that popped into my head, but to sit with no digital devices within reach and really listen to programmes I'd picked out.
The UK is blessed with the BBC, and in particular with Radio 3 and Radio 4. We also have the BBC Sounds app, which allows you to listen to things you missed, usually for at least 30 days after broadcast and often for a year or more. I started with that morning's transmission of the Shipping Forecast, a weather forecast for mariners on Radio 4, which these days is mostly listened to by people like me who love it for its familiarity, the cadence and regularity of the content, always different and always the same - 'Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, westerly or south westerly 3 to 5, occasionally 2, backing southeasterly 2 to 4 later, moderate to rough, becoming slight or moderate, showers, good' - and on through all 31 sea areas around Britain and Ireland, then observations from the coastal stations. Every day at 00.48 and 05:34, it's a national institution which actual sailors used to rely on when it was still broadcast on longwave and could be heard hundreds of miles out to sea. Who knows how long it will survive in the digital age?
Shipping forecast page on the BBC website
Next was a Radio 3 programme from Saturday night, '100 Years of the Shipping Forecast', a celebration of the broadcast's centenary from the 2025 BBC Proms, including a piece called Yonderland by the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, commissioned by the BBC for the occasion. There was a lot of sea-related music played by the Ulster Orchestra, and the programme concluded (as Radio 4 itself does every night just before the shipping forecast) with 'Sailing By', by Ronald Binge.
Wikipedia article about the BBC Proms
Wikipedia article about Sailing By (includes map of the shipping areas)
That was enough nostalgia, so then I listened to 'Bayeux Tapestry', a 2 hour dramatisation of the story depicted in the tapestry by Simon Armitage and Jeff Young. First broadcast in 2001, it was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra recently to mark the loan of the tapestry to the British Museum, where it's on display until next summer.
Every schoolchild (of my generation at least) was taught about the Norman Conquest, 1066 and all that, William the Conqueror, King Harrold and the arrow in the eye, but I didn't know the complete story as recounted in the tapestry (which was made in England but commissioned by the French, and we know what they say about victors writing the history books). Moving in parts and gruesome in others, it was a fine piece of work that would never have been produced for TV and which was really successful as a radio programme.
BBC Sounds page for this programme
To round the afternoon off I listened to a number of episodes of The Haunter of the Dark, series 4 of The Lovecraft Investigations by Julian Simpson. These are mystery/horror/sci-fi fiction based on the Cthulhu Mythos stories by H.P Lovecraft, and I'd previously listened to series 1-3 some years ago when they were first on Radio 4. Excellent, gripping and brilliantly acted and produced, I kind of wish I'd started again at series 1, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and a new listener would definitely need to do that. Fortunately all of the series are on BBC Sounds.
Wikipedia article about these series
I thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon and I'm planning to extend my digital downtime to the whole of Sunday and other times during the week. The disadvantage is that I wasn't listening live, so I couldn't use a simple analogue radio and was forced to use the BBC Sounds app. I connected the phone to my bluetooth speakers, which have their own remote control, so I could play and pause and adjust the volume without having to touch my phone at all, and so I left it on the other side of the room.
In the '90s when I used to commute by car I had a Sony ICF-SW1000T radio with an integrated cassette recorder and timer, which I used to record plays and other programmes from Radio 4 and I played them on my journey. That radio has long since gone, but even if I still had it or if I got one of my stereo cassette decks from the attic and recorded programmes that way, making the process completely analogue isn't the point. The important thing is not having a phone or computer in front of me, but just to sit and listen with my full attention, and that's what I did. I felt much better for it.
Email: kdan01 [at] posteo [dot] net