But even at three miles (5km) from the local telephone exchange, the speed of his broadband connection has inched up over the past few years from 65 kilobytes a second to more than 90 kilobytes a second as the local line has been tweaked and legacy equipment like echo-cancelling coils removed from its junction boxes.
The Echo carried reports of school plays, notices of future meetings of the Korean war veterans' association, local sports results and other humble fare.