Edinburgh Napier University

  Small children, a time consuming job, and remote living are not conducive to a happy life. Why does one choose to do it? If one has to, how can one arrange one's life to make a family work? What can communications do to help? It is easy to ask the questions, but, until one has had to do it, the answers might seem to be either insuperable or straightforward. Actually, living it creates a new reality where both seem to be largely irrelevant. Having lived it, this
chapter can be seen to be action research and is my own personal narrative of progress and shifts in communication technologies and how they helped (or didn't help) to keep in touch. But, while my own views may give some insight
into the adaptations of the involuntary traveller, it is necessary to include the perspectives of the other party as well, and so, in writing this chapter, I also consulted my wife for her version of the memories and experiences of
our own remote relationship. The events of which we speak are of two types and in two very different eras. The first was in the early to mid-1990s, when email and web access were just beginning to make an initial gentle impact on
the community at large; the second was in the last seven years, when the range and rate of communications and media options had changed fundamentally and
continuously.