I am not well suited to the gadget age, I find.
The first one I acquired was a cellphone. A huge brick of a thing I bought not for ‘street-wise’ reasons but because I rather resented paying British Telecom £11 a month for the privilege of making two telephone calls, each at less than two minutes duration.
With a ‘pay as you go’ I reckoned to make the same number of calls for no more than £1.50.
Alas and alack, as fast as I booked on ten or twenty quids worth of usage, the money drained mysteriously away. And, when protests to the phone company achieved nothing, I consigned the brick to a drawer – where it resides to this day.
Much, much later I tried again, this time with a tiny sleek thing that promised all sorts of goodies at no extra charge. Unfortunately I couldn’t understand what the goodies were for and I couldn’t get them to work anyway.
With much swearing and many mistakes I did one day compose a text message, then pressed the wrong button and obliterated it.
After which, that phone joined the first.
No more mobile for me
I shan’t be bothering again. I don’t expect ever to need to know the air temperature in Stockholm, or a good sushi restaurant to go to if I’m in Glasgow. Nor do I feel the need to have available a hundred thousand tracks, ten of which I might actually play a time or two before I become bored with them.
And if I arrange to meet with someone I am quite content to announce my arrival when I get there. I feel no urge to telephone whilst I’m still ten paces away, so he or she won’t be startled. And if I’m in someone’s company and they spend several minutes ignoring me while they natter with someone else, they are quite likely to have their phone inserted in a place not designed for it.
As for those who stride along with one of those bluetooth thingys stuck in their ear, chatting to themselves – I can think of nothing to say that is printable. Except perhaps ‘prat’.
Anyway my computer requires a land line, so I’ve gone back to a house phone. At least it’s vaguely the right dogbone shape
I use it to make telephone calls.
Image: Mykl Roventine under CC BY 2.0
