I (Ivor) am not a fan of mobile phones. I once threw mine in a bin to make the point to a sibling who constantly moaned about me not having it switched on. I have a perfectly good landline that I answer when at home and chances are if you phoned me while I was out I would consider it an intrusion.
Pam loves hers and is always looking at it or typing on it. She gets annoyed when I tut. I am told it is vital to maintaining our social media presence for the several collaborative projects on which we, erm, collaborate. I’m sure she’s right, and I know I’m greatly in the minority these days, but I still feel that we’ve lost on the roundabout of good manners much more than we have gained on the swings of communicative convenience. I don’t like them. They’re intrusive and bad mannered, and they have made society the same way.
I wondered briefly whether lockdowns and social isolation might bring good old-fashioned landlines back into the mainstream, but then remembered how network providers have it all nicely sewn up at both ends, charging us insane tariffs for landlines that we now only use to watch telly while upselling us into “unlimited” mobile contracts by making anything less actually cost more(?) As John Lydon once asked his audience, ‘ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’
Anyhoo, it was nice to hear I’m not the only one. Here’s today’s Viral Voices – a delightfully catchy little number from our old friends Pete and Paul called “Mobile Phone”
voicestw.com 