I do not get many full weekends. There is always a job overrunning, or a quote that has to be in by Monday, or somebody who needs one small thing done that turns into six hours. So when I take one properly I take it properly, and I go somewhere with no signal on purpose.
Not for the scenery. Because a phone that does not work is the only holiday I actually believe in.
Why no signal is the whole point
The first two hours are horrible. You reach for it constantly. You feel the shape of it in your pocket and it is doing nothing and you check it anyway, and then you catch yourself and feel like an idiot.
After that something switches off. Time goes strange, in a good way. You eat when you are hungry instead of when the calendar says. You go to bed because it is dark rather than because it is eleven.
By Saturday afternoon I am a different man to the one who drove up. Slower. Less snappy. Better company, if I am honest, than the version of me that has been on site all week telling people what things will cost.
One room and nothing to prove
It is never anywhere fancy. One room, a decent bed, somewhere to make coffee, and a window that looks at something that is not another building. That is the whole requirement.
I train once over the weekend and it is outside and it does not resemble a programme. A hill, a bag, whatever is there. The rest of the time I am walking or eating or lying on top of the bed doing absolutely nothing, which is a skill I have had to learn and which does not come naturally to me.
There is no schedule. That is the luxury. Not the room, not the view. The fact that nothing has to happen at any particular time.
What I would actually do with the two days
Now, if you were there, the no schedule part becomes considerably more interesting.
Because here is the thing about having nowhere to be. It removes the excuse. At home everything is quick. Everyone is squeezing something into a gap between two other things, and it makes men rushed and it makes them careless.
Two days with no signal means I do not have to be quick with you. It means I can start something on Saturday morning and still not be finished with it by the afternoon, and there is nothing you can do about that because you also have nowhere to be.
You would find out fairly early that I am not in a hurry. Most men are. I am not, and it unsettles people the first time.
Slow is the point, not the technique
People hear slow and think it is a technique. It is not. It is just what happens when a man is genuinely certain there is nothing coming next.
You would spend a lot of that weekend waiting. Waiting to be told, waiting to be allowed, waiting for me to decide the moment had arrived. And you would find, probably to your own irritation, that you liked it a great deal more than you expected to.
I would let you make the coffee. I would let you think you were in charge of the afternoon. And then at some point on Saturday evening it would become extremely clear to both of us that you were not, and we would both be fine with that.
Sunday, and the drive back
Sunday is the good one. Nothing to arrive for, nothing to prepare. Just the last of it, in a room that smells like the weekend, with the light coming in properly for once.
Then the phone comes back on somewhere around the second junction and forty messages land at once and I am back to being the man who tells people what things cost.
Why I never take a weekend with a plan
Booked dinners, timed activities, a list. That is not a weekend off, that is work with better scenery.
The whole value of it is that nothing is decided. If Saturday turns into a walk and nothing else, fine. If Saturday turns into not leaving the room at all, also fine, and considerably more likely.
Anyone who arrives with an itinerary has misunderstood what they were invited to.
But there is a version of that weekend that does not fit on a website that Google is allowed to read. If you want the rest of it, you already know that I keep that somewhere else.