Dorset

It was at the Rural Life Conference, held at Keele University in 1989, that I met my now partner, Graham Duncan, and witnessed the future.  A highlight of these conferences were the day trips to new projects so that we could see examples of good practice that might be replicated in our own remote areas.

ACRE had been very proactive in trying to create on line opportunities for rural areas struggling to keep up with cutting edge enterprise opportunities. That year ACRE’s Rhys Taylor had organised an outing to see a rural tele-cottage. This project was a innovative prototype enabling early adopters of the Internet to work from a rural community. This would be through the use of a hub with work space based in a village hall or school or even a disused railway station with Internet access, a rural rarity in those days and something we now take for granted with connectivity in our own homes and on mobile phones. The title of our trip was Working Tele-cottages and there was to be a demonstration of their use to our remote villages at a rural school.

The excursion was made by coach into rural Staffordshire and I was entertained on the journey by my new friend Graham who, like me, had only fairly recently started working for a Rural Community Council. When we arrived at the school we had a bit of difficulty getting into the car park because of the need to accommodate the height of our coach and some overhead cables but eventually after much manoeuvring the driver succeeded with Rhys guiding us in.

Once inside the school we were proudly shown around the project facilities before getting to the main event of the day, a first time online link with ACRE…….except it didn’t work, there was a problem and ‘Houston’ could not be contacted. This situation went on for some time with Rhys, normally a very calm man, getting more and more frustrated and embarrassed as multiple attempts were made to speak to ACRE. It seemed a bit like someone shouting into a void. After what seemed like a lifetime a caretaker came in wanting to know what that ‘damn coach’ had done to the overhead telephone cables. It turned out that our working tele-cottages trip had inadvertently succeeded in cutting off communication between this rural outpost and the outside world.  We did giggle a bit on the way back on the coach like naughty schoolchildren and we do to this day when remembering how a Working Tele-cottages outing had morphed into a Wrecking Tele-cottages trip.

contributed by: Wendy Cutts