This week, Emma gets nostalgic for when a phone call was difficult, public, but infinitely more special. That is, until she remembers her father’s fit about the bill!

I bet you all thought I was going to start giving out about the fact that there’s already Easter Eggs in the shops, right? That before we’ve even finished off all the Christmas treats there’s cream eggs tempting us? Wrong! That’s next week topic, this week I’m talking about smart phones.

Now I’m not terribly smart so this won’t be a very cerebral approach, but having listened to many conversations about Grok (an atrocity I simply can’t get my head around), I wondered what it would be like if we didn’t have smartphones? Or even mobile phones of any kind?

Also, on a far less dangerous level, I was taken aback by the alarming volume of ads on my social media based on conversations that I’d had in the privacy of my home. I was bemoaning the dirt of the shower door (in my head I thought, but obviously I said it aloud at one point) and the insane amount of dog hair in the house only to have a stream of ads offering multiple solutions to both. It all felt very unnerving and unsettling, even it was nothing new but for the very first time I’ve started to look on my phone as something malevolent. Maybe I should put it out, and not the poor dog.

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent, but it got me thinking about the days when we all had landlines and we got on grand. I’m looking at things through rose-tinted glasses but that’s what middle age does to you, stay with me. Most homes had their phone on those ridiculously small hall tables which meant you had to sit on the stairs to make a call. We lived in a bungalow and our phone was on the wall in the kitchen, which was not at all suited to all those angst-filled teen calls.

Dissecting the youth disco while the dinner was being served up around you wasn’t ideal. Later on, our parents got a phone in their bedroom which offered far more privacy, but that didn’t come without its own problems, which was the very real possibility of someone listening in. You’d hear that tell-tale click on the line and roar ‘I’m on the phone!’

Sometimes it was an innocent mistake but not always. My mother could have had a career in Scotland Yard, she was such an expert at noiselessly ear-wigging. Seems like there’s always been someone listening in, but at least she wasn’t trying to sell me anything. We’d all run then when we’d see our dad coming with the itemised phone bill. He’d be after circling recurring numbers and would be trying to identify them. ‘No clue,’ we’d say, making a run for the hills.

Having a special ‘phone voice’ was a thing too. Caller ID wasn’t introduced for ages, and this is a wild idea for a whole generation, you’d answer the phone without having a clue who was on the other end. To cover all possibilities most mums perfected a particular ‘helloooo,’ like Hyacinth Bucket Lady of the House, even if they’d never admit to it.

Another thing that’s hard to get your head around now is how long we were prepared to wait for someone to come to the phone: many, many minutes, and then some more. And how people thought nothing of answering a ringing phone in halls of residence or boarding schools and going off to find the person it was for, without a second thought. I’m not sure we’d do that now. Apparently we’re all too ‘busy.’

And who remembers callcards? Pre-paid, they were luxury and meant you didn’t have to carry around a load of change to use a public phone, once you found one that was working. They were like ATM cards, and you’d insert them in a payphone to make a call. Fierce fancy they were, and collecting them (especially from other countries) was a big thing for a while.

Now that I think about it, it’s a wonder we ever got to make a call at all, the lengths we had to go to. But the benefit was that it meant you only phoned someone when you had something to say or a message to deliver. I know it’s good to stay in touch with people but I think we’re now possibly too connected. Here’s how lots of my phone calls typically go: ‘Hi,’ ‘Hi.’ ‘Any news?’ ‘No. You?,’ ‘No.’ ‘Not a bad day out,’ ‘No, not bad at all,’ ‘any news?’ ‘no, you already asked me that,’ ‘I’ll let you go so, you’re probably busy,’ ‘Not really, but sure I’ve no news,’ ‘ok, nothing strange so? And on it goes.

And then there are the calls you make when you’re filling in time: when you’re driving and you’re bored, or you’re waiting for someone to show up and you’re not sure what to do with yourself. It’s always so obvious when you’re on the receiving end of those calls because the caller abruptly quips ‘Oh I have to go now’ and you’re dropped like a hot spud. How rude! And in a category all of their own are the endlessly unnecessary calls I make to my sister to vent like a maniac or just to have her say that ‘it will all be grand.’ That’s a big burden for someone to carry.

Mobile phones have also somehow made it more acceptable for people to break plans, or run late for meetings, without thinking it’s a big deal. I’m guilty of it myself. ‘Traffic is terrible, I’ll be there in 10 minutes,’ is a text we all fire off, instead of leaving on time in the first place. Whatever happened to making a plan and sticking to it?

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with all this, and none of these observations are original, but I was in a waiting room during the week, and every last person, young and old, was on their phones, myself included and it struck me that we looked like zombie extras in some sci-fi movie (directed by Elon Musk). Remember when you’d have to make do with ancient, dog-eared magazines to pass the time? Readers Digest or National Geographic? Or God forbid, talk to someone? A glance around school car parks will also reveal much the same picture. Now, I don’t want to preach, and I know for many people these are moments to catch up on life admin or reply to important messages and it’s not all mindless doom scrolling but personally I’m going to be focusing on functional phone use over the mindless, brain rotting stuff.  If you’ve time to kill in the car do your kegels, say a decade of the Rosary, or just clean out your wallet instead.

Again, I know I’m taking a hugely simplistic view of things here but I wonder if we communicate less, could we ultimately say more? And if we had a smaller lens to view the world, would we actually see more? Can we start a pushback to get a new norm, where we all have a landline again? Ideally before my smallie starts asking to get a phone in a few years’ time? I’ll leave that with ye so.

In a totally different topic, there was major hedgecutting taking place around where I live this week (this is the permitted season), and the amount of rubbish the trim revealed along the country roads is absolutely disgusting. Wrappers, cans, papers, bottles, the list goes on. Nature is doing its best, and it is lovely to see things starting to bud but sadly, and not surprisingly, people’s behaviour is far less inspiring. That’s something else we could do if we put down the phones: a 10-minute power litter pick. And you’d definitely have earned a cream egg for yourself then!