It’s Sunday evening and I am writing this the old-fashioned way – longhand, in a notebook. I’m sitting in my writing hut (writing hot might be a better name, now we seem to be having a sudden heatwave) but the iMac screen on my desk is black and blank and I don’t have my usual soothing spotify playlist on in the background. My laptop is in the house somewhere and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to type this up and post it because, as of Thursday afternoon, I’m in Apple-exile: banned from using my phone, my laptop, my desktop computer and ipad, until The System decides I have served my time and am allowed to be released into the online world again.

It does feel very much like a punishment, though my crime is not cyber-stalking, catfishing or online harrassment, but forgetting my Apple ID password. Having been too familiar, during the sleep-deprived years of small children, with the chaotic shame-cycle of disorganisation, I’m generally pretty on top of these things and have developed good systems. (It’s one of the most underrated joys of middle age.) However, in this case my system (or one of the people on my family sharing account) has let me down, and the password I thought was current is no longer recognised. All attempts to change it take me through a dense maze of channels, which double back on themselves and lead to dead ends, often featuring a pop-up box demanding the password I don’t know.

After a couple of days of wandering around the maze on my own, I rang Apple Support. The conversations that followed culminated in a screen-sharing exercise in which I was steered through the maze at break-neck speed and instructed to click an option which, I was subsequently informed, meant I was now in something called Account Recovery. ‘You must not use any of the devices linked to this Apple ID until further notice. You must not pass Go, or collect £200.’ (I’m not sure if they actually said that.) ‘You will receive an email within 72 hours informing you when you can re-access your account.’

72 hours?

It took me a while to work out that that’s 3 days.

I looked at the unfinished email on my screen, the open document behind it, and thought about the implications of being unreachable by phone. Like many midlife women I am the first emergency contact for my elderly (and very unwell) mother, and daughters away from home who have all, at one (or more!) time, had to make that 3am SOS call.

I tried to explain to the voice on the other end of the phone why this was not a viable option for me. ‘I understand,’ said the voice, reading from a script in a tone that was utterly devoid of understanding, ‘But Account Recovery has been activated, and now The System needs to verify your identity. Any activity on your Apple ID will be considered suspicious and will prolong The Process. Thank you for calling and have a nice day.’

And that was it. It was like standing on the platform as the doors of the last train to civilisation closed and watching it disappear down the track. No chance to finish the email I was writing, or check my banking app, or print out the chapter I was working on. No opportunity to phone my mum or text my daughters. I felt a bit panicky. Disorientated with the suddenness of my excommunication, and the length of it (3 days, at least!) Incredulous and indignant. And ashamed of that, too. It’s a phone, right? Just a phone and a laptop, not an oxygen mask. I lived the first 35 years of my life without all of that just fine.

But I’ve had plenty of time (no scrolling, see?) to think about it since, and realise it’s actually not that simple. It’s not an oxygen mask, but in the age we live in technology is a kind of a lifeline. It’s the scaffolding that supports the fabric of our 2020s lives, and we are encouraged to rely on it, for everything from banking and travel, to storing our precious photos and communicating with loved ones. My mum, who has never had a smartphone, finds herself increasingly cut off from modern life by the fast-flow of technology, marooned on her shrinking analogue island. Even Marks and Spencers, which is like her parish church, no longer accepts the Sparks card she keeps in her purse and has put everything on an app. There’s a blamey kind of narrative that we should spend less time on our phones and do a ‘digital detox’, but being dependent on a smartphone doesn’t mean we’re lazy or weak-willed or addicted, it means we’re twenty-first century humans. And being swiftly and summarily severed from my phone felt like an inhumane response to a very human error.

Last weekend we went to the wedding of our niece on my husband’s side. It was a beautiful day – a blue-sky, confetti-and-champagne celebration of love, both romantic and family. Sitting on the terrace of a beautiful old house in the evening we watched the strawberry moon rise, detaching itself from the treetops and floating up into the soft summer dusk like a pink silk lantern. My phone was on the table in front of me (of course) and I tried to photograph it. ‘Why do phones never do these things justice?’ I said, and my nephew (who still exists in my mind as a rosy-cheeked baby with dimpled fists, but who now towers above me and is daddy to his own sweet boy) patiently explained about apertures and exposure times, before laughing, ‘Of course, my dad would say there’s no need to photograph it. Just enjoy it in the moment.’

He’s a wise man, my brother-in-law. A physicist, who my daughter describes as the person she’d most want to be with in the event of an apocalypse. A couple of hours earlier we’d all listened, rapt and damp-eyed, to his father of the bride speech, in which he’d talked of an ‘ever-unfolding revelation of the Now.’ ‘The past no longer exists. The Future does not yet exist,’ he’d said (in his quiet, self-deprecating way.) ‘All that exists is Now. It’s time to dispel the worries. It’s time to play in the Now.’

It struck a deep chord with me, the Arch-Empress of Anxiety, Duchess of Disaster Scenarios. I must remember that, I thought, dabbing my eyes (and I knew I wouldn’t, so asked my lovely sister-in-law afterwards if he would mind forwarding on his speech notes.)

That’s the phrase I have reached for this weekend. Without the constant pull of external imperatives, I have prioritised playing in the Now. I have interacted only with the people whose company I’m in. I have set aside worrying about whether the payment I’m expecting has appeared in my bank account. We have spent the densely hot day wandering through the park of an old house and seeking the shade of green glades I would ordinarily have framed in a photograph. I have stood by a pool so still that the reflection was a perfect mirror of the trees on the far bank and the boiling purple clouds above it, and I have drunk in all the detail that I didn’t capture on my phone. On the way home I dug out the outdated road atlas from the detritus of crisp packets and dead leaves in the back of the car to find a better route than the one my husband’s phone directed us along to get there. Instead of baking a tik-tok inspired banana bread I have reprised the Victoria sponge recipe on the batter-spattered page in the falling-apart copy of Delia’s Complete Kitchen that my soon-to-be mother in law gave me the first Christmas my not-yet husband and I were together. Instead of spotify, I am listening now to distant thunder, coming closer.

And in a minute I will go inside and borrow a phone (I don’t want to risk the wrath of The System by using my own without permission) to ring Apple support, and see if I’ve been verified as myself, and am allowed to rejoin the slipstream of modern life. I hope so. There are things I need to do and responsibilities I need to take up again. Work is waiting. But I’ve enjoyed my spell in recovery, playing in the ever-unfolding now.

(Monday update: my account has been recovered and I’m able to use my devices again, so could photograph the peonies I rescued from the deluge last night. Usually I cut them sparingly because they look so nice in the garden, but they’d been thoroughly flattened and were mud splattered and sad so I brought them all in. This weekend has been a study in silver linings.)