Vicarious Stress and the Button I should Never Have Touched

I had it all planned.

A whole day to write. Mr M was going out to a race meeting at Hamilton. A birthday treat. I’m not a racing fan, so I metaphorically pressed 1 on the keypad to opt out of this option. It was going to be just me, Florence, my notebook, and the kind of uninterrupted quiet that a writer dreams about. I was going to be productive. I was going to be creative. I was, frankly, going to be magnificent. I even planned to visit my writing retreat parked on the drive in the guise of Evie, the Adria Twin. You don’t need to travel anywhere to enjoy the solitude of a campervan.

What I actually did was wait for the gasman.

He was coming to check the boiler, you see. Any time between 12 and 6 pm. Which, as anyone who has ever waited for a tradesperson will know, means you cannot leave the house, can’t fully settle, can’t get into anything that requires genuine concentration, and will absolutely be in the middle of something important when the doorbell finally goes at 5.59 pm.

Florence was no help. She was on the sofa. Unbothered. Magnificent in her own way, but not the kind of company that inspires great literature.

By the time the gasman left, I had drunk four cups of Tetley, eaten an entire packet of custard creams (which doesn’t count, because have you seen the size of custard creams now? They’re tiny. It’s practically nothing.), and written precisely zero words. My creativity, it turns out, had been switched off, much like a router in a house where nobody uses the internet.

Which brings me, in a rather roundabout way, to my friend.

I have a confession to make.

A couple of months ago, I visited a friend — a woman who lives alone, doesn’t own a smartphone, and relies on her landline the way most of us rely on our right arm. Or left arm, for us left-handers. While I was there, being helpful and practical, and having a good tidy around the edges, I turned her broadband router off. She doesn’t use the internet. It was connected via a long extension lead that I, in my entirely non-existent health and safety capacity, had decided was a potential fire or trip hazard. Turning it off seemed like one less thing to worry about. I congratulated myself on a job well done and quietly returned home.

How was I to know that before too long, her landline phone would no longer work without it?

Would you know that?

This is what is happening across the country right now. The old telephone network — the one that has run through copper wires into our homes since whoever it really was who first worked out how to send a voice down a wire — is being switched off. By the end of 2027, every landline in Britain will have been moved over to something called Digital Voice. It runs through your broadband router. It works perfectly well for most people. For most people, the changeover is seamless.

But seamless for most people is not the same as safe for all people.

If your broadband goes down, your phone goes down. If there’s a power cut, your phone goes down. If a well-meaning friend visits and turns your router off because you don’t use the internet, and it seems like one less thing to worry about, your phone goes down. And if you’re elderly, or vulnerable, or living alone, a phone that doesn’t work is not an inconvenience. It’s a genuine risk. You won’t even be able to make 999 calls.

Yes, most of us have mobile phones now. Even Mr M has one. My friend has one. She doesn’t know where it is. Well, she has lots of mobile phones on her table, all different shapes and sizes, but the one that actually works is nowhere to be found. Naturally.

My friend will have received letters about all of this. I have no doubt. BT, Openreach, Ofcom — they have all been sending communications explaining the switchover, telling customers what to expect, reassuring everyone that it will all be fine. But what use is a letter to someone who struggles to read? What use is a technical explanation to someone who has never needed to know what a router is and has absolutely no reason to start now?

The letters land on the mat. They go in the drawer. Life goes on.

“Just get her a Ring Doorbell,” someone will say. Someone always says this.

I would like those people to consider the logistics for just a moment.

A Ring Doorbell requires a working internet connection. It requires an app to be downloaded and configured on a smartphone. It requires the person using it — my friend, in her home — to interact with a screen and understand what she’s looking at. And if something goes wrong with any part of that chain, it requires someone to fix it remotely. In her case, me, in another country.

Technology is a wonderful thing. I’m not against it. I’m simply suggesting that “just get a Ring Doorbell” belongs in exactly the same category as “just Google it” — excellent advice for people who already know how to do it, and completely useless for everyone else.

There are rules in place to protect vulnerable customers during the Digital Voice switchover. Ofcom requires providers to offer battery backup units, to identify people who depend on their landline for safety, and to make sure nobody is left without a means to call for help in an emergency. All of this exists. All of it is real.

But every single protection depends on one thing: someone knowing to ask for it.

By the way, if you want to check whether someone’s landline has been affected by the Digital Voice switchover, or to request a battery backup unit from BT, call 0330 1234 150 or text HELP to 61998.

My friend didn’t know to ask. She didn’t know there was anything to ask for. She had a perfectly ordinary morning, completely unbothered, while I was at my wits’ end 300 miles away in a different country, working my way through automated phone menus on my fourth cup of tea, wondering whether I had accidentally rendered a vulnerable woman unreachable by emergency services, and quietly eyeing up the Dairy Milk.

Florence, my Border Collie, is famous for her vicarious adventures. She sends me out into the world on her behalf while she remains on the sofa, self-important and serene, and calls it living.

Apparently, I do something similar for my friend. Vicarious stress. I have all the panic, while she has none of the awareness that anything was ever wrong.

The good news is that my friend’s phone now works. The care team went in, switched the router back on, and order was restored. She never knew there was a problem.

I still haven’t done any writing. There are no custard creams left. The Dairy Milk is open. Mr M is still at the races, but apparently backing three-legged horses who don’t know the difference between sleeping and racing.

If you have an elderly relative, neighbour, or friend — particularly one who has had a ‘helpful’ visitor recently — it might be worth a quick check. Not about their health, not about their shopping. About their router. Is it switched on? Does their phone still work? Do they know what Digital Voice is?

They probably don’t. And depending on who’s been around to help lately, neither might their router.

Now it's Monday. The old router wasn't compatible. A new router was delivered. This new super-duper router has been connected.

The phone pretends to ring.

Nobody can hear it or answer it.

An engineer has been booked finally - Wednesday, 10 till 12, with Friday as a backup in case he doesn't appear. I had to insist on specific times. "You have a responsibility to sort this," I said, "and it's gone on long enough."

They agreed.

Yes, a complaint has been sent to BT.

No, I’ve not received a reply.

The Dairy Milk is all gone. Mr M has stopped backing horses. My friend remains oblivious.

I'll let you know how things progress.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a new supply of Dairy Milk that won’t eat itself and approximately eight thousand words that won’t write themselves.