Phones

Funny thing the phone. I seem to have a completely different approach to phone calls than most of the people i know in that - i don't really want to get them. When i was growing up in a red brick terrace in the Midlands we didn't have a phone, the box at the end of the road was used for the rare phone calls we had to make (our friends and relations didn't have a phone either and most of them lived within walking distance). So you popped in.
There was one house in the street who had a telephone and that was the number we gave people for emergencies and they would come and get you. They didn't seem to mind the burden of this and were generally first in the know of any gossip or tragedy in the area. The trouble was a visit from the phone owners meant a fraught walk down the terrace because calls were always important - like the hatch, match or dispatch column in the local paper it could mean wedding bells, pregnancy or death so my Mum or Dad's heart would have been in their mouth when making this short trek.
I seem to not be able to shake this attitude so i have a cheap mobile that i rarely use (twenty quid credit lasts months) and i keep phone dealings from my land line short and blunt. Nearly everyone else i know has embraced the mobile as a social and entertainment tool filling their iPhone with apps that sound like a dog farting which they will only ever open once and then forget about.
It's not that I'm anti social but i prefer the face to face debating arena of the pub or workplace, however, for some reason, i like e-mails and texts probably because there's no human contact and I'm turning into a Dalek!