The following uses Anne and Roger in the Springroll, so to speak. But that is simply a literary device to illustrate a point. They are only as guilty and innocent as the rest of us. I used them as the subjects this time and beg their tolerance of it.

You can find them at most electronics shops and, of course, they are at Costco. They are billed as having a range of up to 20 miles but we know better – if they go two or three, we are lucky. I am talking about walkie-talkies, those little palm-sized, hand-held, two-way radios made by Cobra, Motorola and Uniden, just to name a few makers. We rely on them up here.

By ‘we’, I mean my neighbours John and Jorge and our summer neighbours John and MC. Roger and Anne are our half-year neighbours and they, too, rely on these little communicators.

Or, more to the point, they rely on me. Kind of.

They shouldn’t really. But because Sally and I use walkie-talkies more (while we range all over the property and nearby) and because we live full-time here, I seem to be able to program the devices a bit better than my neighbours. A lot better, actually. It is a skill that so far has proven elusive to the others. That is mostly because we are all post-60 and if some ‘local feller’ can do it in a minute, why vex yourself trying to figure out the instructions? So, they don’t.

Plus the instructions are in some weird kind of tachno-babble as interpreted poorly by a non-English speaker.

When the radios need reprogramming, they bring them here. We sit around and I press ‘menu’ and jump around prodding it this way and that while we have tea and cookies until, somehow, we have found the right channels again or deprogrammed the alarm or whatever. It is an annual neighbourhood ritual that bonds us.

The daily communication that goes on via walkie-talkie between our separate home sites is what sometimes passes for entertainment around here. It’s more interesting than watching the fire in the woodstove, and definitely more amusing.

The ringer-noise-bell goes ‘toodle-oodle, toodle-oodle’ and then there is silence. The just-arrived-for-the-season caller has forgotten the long established protocol; since we are all on the same channel, the caller must follow up the toodles with a name-call to a specific person. That is because there are 7 others on the ‘party line’ and we don’t want everyone disturbed, only the target audience. After a dozen or so unresponsive ‘toodles’ Anne, for example, will remember and then shout out: “Sally, Anne calling. Sally, Anne calling. Can you hear me?”

Because everyone seems to have to relearn the system on arrival every year, Anne might also leave her finger on the transmit button the first few times which prevents her receiving an answer so despite Sally trying to respond, we subsequently overhear, “Oh, I guess she isn’t in. I’ll just call later.”

I have often wondered to whom those words are spoken but I digress……….

Of course, we could hear all of that soliloquy(it is on transmit, after all) but couldn’t respond. And, because she didn’t get Sal, she immediately turns the radio off to save the battery and Sally is rarely quick enough to slip in with an “I am here! I am here!”

So, Sally gets on the ’emergency’ airhorn and bellows a few ‘aah-oogahh, aah-oogahs’ in the direction of Anne’s cabin a half mile away but, of course, Anne was calling from inside her house and doesn’t hear it. But Roger, who was outside, does.

Toodle-oodle, toodle-oodle! “Roger here. Anne can you hear me? Why is Sally using the airhorn?”

Sally: “It was me calling, Roger. Sally. Anne was trying to call me but left her finger on the transmit button. She couldn’t hear me.”

Roger is a bit hard of hearing himself and so he counters with, “Who is this? Couldn’t hear what? Are you alright? Is your walkie-talkie working?”

Sally: “Yes. Yes it is. We are talking on it now, actually. Roger………..Roger?”

Roger’s finger remains tightly on the transmit button (as is the custom in the Spring) and so, not hearing anything, he gets worried and rushes up to the house to check Anne’s unit. He is thinking that it may be just that his unit has a dead battery. When he gets there, he takes Anne’s unit and, in the process, he releases the button on his and Sally can get through. “Roger? Roger? Can you hear me now?”

“Yes, Yes, I can hear you now. My radio wasn’t working there for a bit. I can never figure out why that is.”

“Never mind. Anne was trying to reach me. Can you put her on?”

Roger passes the unit to Anne and asks, “Anne. Were you trying to reach Sally because of her airhorn going aah-oogah?”

“No. I didn’t hear any airhorn. What a coincidence that she was trying to reach me. I was trying to reach her. But now that she’s home, I’d like to talk to her.”

“Well, you should turn on your walkie-talkie then! I’m going back to work!”

Sally and Anne make another attempt at talking but working the transmit button has not, as yet, been habitualized for this season and confusion reigns. Finally, Anne decides to come over to have their radios looked at ‘by the expert’.

I pretend to fiddle with the radios while Roger, Anne, Sally and I have wine later that day and catch up on the news. In that way, we get our messages conveyed. All thanks to walkie-talkies, when you think about it. In their own indirect way, they facilitate communication by ensuring get-togethers. It’s a modern wonder!