Dispatches from a TGV, somewhere in the fog

I am currently gliding through the misty hills of the Minervois on my way to Lyon, wrapped in the kind of fog that makes you feel like the lead in a moody Scandinavian crime drama. All that is missing is a mysterious corpse and a detective with a troubled past. Instead, I have a laptop and a mission.

I have, against all odds, managed to connect to the train’s Wifi. It looks stable. It looks reliable. It looks like the kind of connection that would never betray you. This is, of course, a lie. It is slow, it cuts out whenever it feels like it, and it seems to have the work ethic of a civil servant on the eve of a long weekend.

Which brings me to my great philosophical question of the morning: why is it that in every TV serial and film, the bandits get to log on from absolutely anywhere? A moving van. A cave. A hot-air balloon. They tap three keys, say “I’m in,” and suddenly they are inside the most secure facility on the planet, with progress bars that always finish dramatically one second before disaster. Nobody ever buffers. Nobody ever sees “Connection lost, retrying.” Meanwhile I am fighting a duel with a loading wheel just to open my inbox.

And the stakes of my own little heist are considerable. In 30 minutes, I must log on to the ticket office of the Le Mans 24 Hours to snap up the two tickets I am still missing. It seems the general public sale opens this very morning, a fact that escaped me entirely until I was already hurtling through southern France at 300 km/h. In hindsight, I could have delegated this noble quest to someone sitting comfortably at home with fibre-optic broadband and a nice cup of coffee. But no. I will do it myself, from a train, in the fog, on Wifi with commitment issues.

It will be a battle of nerves, thousands of racing fans clicking at the same instant while my connection decides whether today is a day for working or for existential reflection. In the real race, cars travel at 340 km/h for 24 hours. In mine, a tiny loading wheel will decide my fate.

So if you will excuse me, I must now concentrate. Lock in. Crack my knuckles like a movie hacker. Somewhere ahead lies a ticketing page, and I intend to get in.

Wish me luck. If this post suddenly stops, assume I entered a tunnel.