None of my three ways of using the Internet will work right now, and I have no idea when I will be able to post this on our website. This is unusual. It’s not just a lack of electricity bringing down the Bingham network – if that were the case my 3G USB stick would work. Our 3G mobile phones can do calls and texts, but that’s all. This has not happened before in our nearly three years in Addis, but then the threat of anti-government protests that could turn violent has never been so great as it is this weekend.

When we drove back from the airport this morning having collected a family of new teachers the 30 or so tiny shoe and phone shops near the school were all closed up – odd, even at 8am on a Saturday morning.

We’ve had travel warnings for several days now, since some demonstrations turned nasty in the northern city of Gondar - a wonderful place of mountains and mediaeval castles. Addis has been its normal peaceful self, and apart from an increased police presence and unusually closed shops our return trip to the airport revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

But this complete absence of Internet is suspicious. There are reasons why the telecommunications industry in Ethiopia is a state-controlled monopoly, and we suspect that’s relevant to our technological isolation this weekend. Reports from Gondar have suggested the use of social media this last week has been “limited”. So we wait. And we pray.

The fast fibre optic Internet connection supplied by Sky at our new home in Balsham in Cambridgeshire now feels a million miles away. When it was switched on in late July all our devices heaved a sigh of relief and began downloading riotously. What a joy it was to watch iPlayer for hours, with no spinning pink circles. Three days later an email was received from Sky reminding us that we had a monthly download cap of 25 GB. We’d used it up in three days. Oops. It’s taken me six months to download 13 GB here in Addis.

Balsham? Cambridgeshire? The journey began a year ago. And it’s all Bill’s fault.

Six weeks in June and July last year spent hopping from holiday accommodation to holiday accommodation and constantly living out of suitcases was lovely, but left us and me in particular feeling a bit disenfranchised. Our home in St Albans is rented out, and despite many warm and greatly appreciated welcomes from family and friends we had nowhere to call our own for the times we are in the UK (once every 6 months or so). Storage space for what remained of our household stuff had been kindly and generously provided by a friend from church, but we were aware that two cold and wet winters would inevitably take their toll. But where do you base yourself when your four children and their families live variously in Cheltenham, Chelmsford, Southampton and Edinburgh? Derbyshire? Then you’re a long way from all of them. We really didn’t know what to do or where to look. Anyway, if we bought somewhere who would look after it while we are in Addis?

A few hilarious hours were spent with our family and Beth in particular looking at what property we could afford and where. A 12 bedroomed semi-detached castle by a loch in the northern highlands of Scotland was the most outlandish possibility. Then, a few days before we returned to Ethiopia from our final holiday destination on the Pembrokeshire coast, Bill turned up.

We’re not entirely sure when we first met Bill and Rachel, but it was at Westminster Chapel in London when I was a student and probably in 1978 or 1979. We attended church and bible studies together, Chris and I baby-sat for their children, Bill repaired my roof once, and on one occasion I helped him try to sell hand-made furniture at the Essex county show (Bill is a highly skilled joiner, in addition to being a now retired secondary school teacher). In 2012 we holidayed together in a 50 foot sailing yacht along a beautiful stretch of the coast of Turkey.

Soon after Bill and Rachel arrived in our holiday home in Pembrokeshire he told us he was in the process of buying a piece of land so he could build his own house, in Haverhill on the Suffolk/Essex/Cambridgeshire border. Explaining he would need to sell his home of some 30 years in Beckton to fund it, it was immediately apparent he would need somewhere in or near Haverhill to rent for a couple of years. A light came on in my head. A door seemed to open. The fog began to lift. Metaphors galore erupted volcanically. It sounded ridiculous, but we made a plan.

A year later Bill has sold his house, we’ve bought 8 Field End in Balsham, We’ve taken all our stuff out of storage, and Bill and Rachel have moved in. There are enough bedrooms in the house for us to have one we can call our own during our visits to the UK. The house is within easy striking distance of many people and places that are important to us – Hannah in Chelmsford; my sister and my mother in Norfolk; Chris’s step-mother in Kettering; friends and church in St Albans; SIM UK in Suffolk; and Beth in Edinburgh via Stansted airport and EasyJet. And it’s in Adnams country.

Bill and Rachel will look after the house for us and keep the (substantial) garden trimmed. We have half the double garage each for storage – including some wood Bill bought 40 years ago and has lovingly cared for, intending to make Rachel a beautiful dining table and chairs. Soon Rachel, soon…