Ring Ring

I got a new mobile phone last week – or more correctly I got a smart phone last week, with all kinds of whistles and bells,  internet access and a gismo that means I can watch TV and pause live radio. I’m impressed, no, really - that is said without a hint of sarcasm.

The phone this one was replacing was a dinosaur, but as is the way with things you become familiar with, it was my dinosaur and I loved it. The dinosaur was also comparatively expensive (make that very expensive) by current tariffs,  giving me 40 free (!) minutes of calls and 40 texts for £15.00 a month, and no internet access.

The lady in the phone shop was lovely, really helpful and very polite when I told her that, and she then went on to tell me how wonderful my new phone would be, when I was on the move, jetting around the world, sky diving and partying with my friends, taking photos with the fabulous  camera on my fabulous phone and emailing them, when I was in Cuba or half way up Mont Blanc - when I was mobile.

It reminded me of all those early ads for Tampax, when to get the full benefit you needed to take up water polo, ice skating and world class competitive tennis. To be honest working from home I’m not that mobile – having my new phone means I can pick my email up in bed – that’s about as mobile as I’m planning to get. I don’t ring people on it that much either, so now instead of not using 40 minutes a month I’ll not  be using 500 minutes a month instead - and also, remarkably for just the £15.00 a month.

I was trying to think – as I spent  several happy hours trying to get iplayer to work, downloading my entire music collection and podcasts of Radio 4 comedy programmes and synchronising my entire life with my phone, that I got my first mobile in 1999 when I was one of the shortlist  for the Channel 4 SitCom Competition.

I was living in a hotel and going in to the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith every day to write and rehearse my sitcom – 

My lovely Aunt, wary of London (after all I am from Norfolk)  had given me some money to buy a phone in case I was mugged…. The size it was it would have made the perfect weapon if I’d tied it into a sock and whirled it round my head. 

Back then people hadn’t got into the swing of being so contactable so it never occurred to me to use the phone or come to that even turn it on, so I would turn the phone on, on the train home after a week away, only to find the voicemail full of messages telling me to switch my bloody phone on. Happy Days …..