I’ve never been at ease with the concept of having a mobile phone. I actually refused to have one for a long time, until I got so sick of an ex-girlfriend badgering me so much to get one and I relented. I’ve had the same call package since then and that was only a few years ago in itself. I’ve had the same tariff and call package since then. A pay as you go thing. Phones have come and gone, been acquired etc to house the sim card, but never anything special, never anything flash. I have no desire to have an I-phone or check my email on some sort of special screen I can drag and demand it to make my tea on a morning or find me a new woman (blonde, large tits etc) and the ones I have had have been the very basic I could find, normally friends unlocked cast offs that are a little beaten up anyway. I then abuse/drop it all over until they too give up the ghost and move on elsewhere. Never have I paid for another. I won’t, because I’m a tight fuck.
Maybe its the intrusion, or maybe it’s the chore of carrying yet something else around with you. Yet something else to leave somewhere or forget on a morning when you are hungover and trying to race out the house. Yet something else to control our lives and make us inherently a source of some sort of multi-media laden nightmare trip to some kind of Willy Wonka type world.
I hear so many people say this to me,
“Oh, I can’t live without my mobile phone….my life is in there…I don’t know what I would do without it….”
Well, I’m certainly going to find out because I have decided to ditch mine. I’d throw it into the sea, if I lived on the coast. Yes, I’m really sick of it.
Those of you who know me and are on the very short list of people who actually call me anyway will not be surprised to hear that I do not like talking on the phone and I do realise to relish experience is probably an absolute fucking delight. But what can I say, I prefer you up close and personal, where I can see you and not on the end of a grainy line, with loud and obnoxious children or traffic in the background.
I hate talking on the phone. Did I mention that? I know that doesn’t really help in the sort of work that I have chosen/fell into because I wasn’t skilled to do anything else because a large part of the job (unfortunately) involves talking to asshol…. I mean, people on the phone. Well, luckily for me, I can moderately handle talking to strangers on the phone. Because I don’t know them. I don’t know what they look like, what they care about and I don’t crave the sort of physical contact from them than say, the people that I know and because of that, I don’t mind shooting what is often shit. Banal time wasting shit on all sides, at that.
Talking on the phone at home I don’t mind either. No, I’m not trying to put anyone calling me at all. I just hate being interrupted from that rare time I have to myself, when I am mobile. Wandering the aisles of Tesco’s or an overstuffed, dusty bookshop with character and without soulless, neon cardboard signage. Walking to and from work or going from here to there in the hope of seeing one of you ugly bastards. That’s my time, that’s my head space and right then, I don’t want to hear from any of you.
I hate that (like many others, I’m sure) process I have to annoyingly schlep through at work when someone deems their phone call, with a person miles away and clearly not important enough at least be in their presence, more important than showing SHEER POLITENESS in at least giving me a half hearted greeting that they don’t even mean as I provide them with a service, regardless of how much the bag I put your items into damages the environment.
“Why don’t you have paper bags?”
“Sorry madam, I think we waste enough paper with the actual books, don’t you?” I say ironically, as I glance down at the Fern Britton ‘autobiography’…
I had one of those moments in a HMV recently, the one in Covent Garden, downstairs in the classical section as it ‘was the only till point open due to breaks’ and the kid behind the till, weeks shy of puberty, gave me that same asshole look that I give to people as they witter away to their non-descript acquaintances about ‘Pooky’s Summer communal garden fete’ and how they must come and bring along their homemade rustic cobs and award winning leek jam as I purchased my Los Campesinos! album and talking to my friend who I was about to meet a matter of minutes later and who was re-iterating that they had actually arrived at the designated spot that I was about to meet her at.
So yeh, I’m not using the mobile anymore. Sorry. It may cause consternation. It may cause me to somehow miss connections or notifications of late arrivals or last minute change in plans but then you are all going to have to be more organised or a bit creative in the future.
If anything, it will make life a bit more interesting. God knows we need it.
