The Phone
I’m in the bathroom shaving. The sound of this particular appliance takes out everything around it, whiskers, blackheads, stray hairs and especially external audio.
“Dad, It’s your phone!”
“Whatever!”
Those that know me and use their phones to call know that I rarely answer it.
In the ‘old’ days, the phone would herald a client, a job, an offer, a budget or a nice challenge by way of a TV show or jingle.
Now the phone offers compensation, alerts and enlargements. Meaningless!
We now live in a strange and flavourless land of tweets and instant messages.
But as I’m explaining that my tweets are sent directly to my phone, my First Wife exclaims, as she tries to find the latest number that has called on said mobile,:
“What Is The Point of them telling you that they Farted in the Key Of D?”
Genius and brilliant!

I used to have my old phone ‘glued’ to me in case my producer or random client would call. No one would text messages, and I remember getting virtual hate mail when I bought my first Fax machine with the accusation that I was ‘getting ahead of myself’.
There was no LOL-ing, FOL-ing or LOLTIFO-ing and you were generally unaware of how people were reacting, smiling, laughing, or generally behaving whilst communicating. It was simply that: A conversation. And it was most of the time worth having.

Now it’s not, and it definitely is a very large case of “Whatever!”
Equally, I could be having a ‘normal’ analogue, face to face conversation with touring daughter.; ‘Chatty McChat and the Chatty-Men’, as we call it. But there’s no response or reaction, as all you can see is the top of the head and the light tap tap Mctapping of yet another pointless text being sent to someone else.
In fact, when my First Wife gets a text, she stops dead wherever she is! In the middle of the road, pavement, park, car! And then proceeds to answer it at a speed that hasn’t actually ever been measured it is that slow!! One letter per five minutes would be progress:
“Are you coming?”
“Yes, in a minute”. Where a minute could mean an hour or several days. Finally, text completed, we continue as though nothing has happened, apart from a chunk of ones life has disappeared forever.

I liked it when a phone was a phone, and you left a message on a piece of paper stuck to the front door.
We’re so into keeping in touch, we never do.
Oops sorry, the phone’s going again; Better get it before it’s……………