The telephone is not necessarily a totally good thing!

I have decided that the telephone is the most impolite thing ever invented.

When I was a child (admittedly a long time ago) I was always taught not to interrupt other people when they were speaking and to wait my turn politely in a conversation and not jump in and ‘out shout’ others. I taught my own children pretty much the same thing in the name of good manners and retaining my sanity.

We would never have dreamed of just walking up to someone who was otherwise engaged and demand they give us their attention immediately, or of expecting someone to get up from an unfinished dinner to speak to us. But that’s pretty much what using the telephone does.

Three times this week I have been in conversation with someone, either in a work meeting or in a social setting, and their phone has rung. Immediately, they have fished it out of their pocket or bag and despite the fact that on at least one of these occasions they had been in the middle of a sentence explaining something fairly complex, they answered it and interrupted what they were doing. Only once did the person apologise afterwards, and on none of these occasions was the call urgent, nor did it need to be dealt with straight away.

I find that sort of situation the height of rudeness, I really do, coming very close second behind people that talk unnecessarily loudly on their phone in a public place. Just because your phone has rung doesn’t mean you necessarily have to answer it. If it’s urgent (and it very rarely is) somehow, some way, you will be reached.

I have noticed that other people find it very hard not only to ignore their phone when it is ringing, but also to switch it off. Our children, when they were teenagers, used to leave their phones on all night and at all hours we used to hear the beeping or loud vibrations when a night owl called or a late text was sent. It drove me nuts, especially when I had to get up for work the next day.

Personally, when I walk through my front door my mobile is switched off. If people want me, and I want to talk to them, they will have my landline number. I thoroughly dislike being contactable 24/7 and the number of junk calls I get on my mobile is increasing (due, I think, to the fact that when you use the web, in particular price comparison sites, you often have to give a contact phone number and I use my mobile number).

We often have ‘dinner for two’ evenings. Mobiles are switched off (all of them) the BT phone is unplugged, the computer is off, we disconnect the doorbell and shut the curtains. We put on some music, have a good bottle of wine and a nice dinner, just the two of us, without any interruptions from the outside world thus guaranteeing us some quality time. The first time we did this The Hubby was quite apprehensive – “What if there is an emergency?” he wailed, probably concerned that his poisonous ex would be trying to get hold of him about something trivial and become irate because he wasn’t jumping to command. “The phone’s off for two hours, three hours max,” I said. “What can happen?” Of course, nothing did.

We’ve done this several times now and it’s a wonderful de-stressor. Being at the world’s beck and call means we never truly relax and by and large, very little is so urgent it needs instant reaction or response. It’s just that we have got used to it, which makes anything else seem unusual or odd. I didn’t even have a mobile phone until about 18 years ago, and only bought one then because I had a job which meant I was travelling alone late at night and wanted the security in case my broken down old car clapped out. I still wonder whether I might be better off without one.

Ring, ring, jingle, jingle.

I see from the newspaper that as from this coming weekend, Virgin Airlines are to allow passengers to use their mobile phones on board, once airborne. Where Virgin goes, others will follow.

Noooooo! On a plane is one of the few places you can get away from the incessant ring and irritating tunes of the ubiquitous mobile these days, one of the few places where you can be guaranteed a relative degree of peace and quiet.

The news has had a mixed reception. Those that are overwhelmingly positive seem to be what in the eighties would have been called yuppies, and seem to be predominantly media types who are welded to their mobiles just in case someone important wants to get hold of them because, as we all know, they are indispensible. The less overjoyed are on the whole older, wiser and family types for whom going on a plane means a welcome break from the tedium and constant contactability of life today.

Personally, I can't wait to get away from the 'phone, the telly and the newspapers. I find the media unrelentingly depressing these days, full of complaining and bad news. And the telephone is the most intrusive instrument ever devised by man and for all its benefits, has some significant downsides.

I don't understand those who feel they must answer their phone at all costs and that the world will end if they don't. If someone walked in while you were having a conversation with a third party or having your dinner with friends and interrupted you and demanded that you respond to them immediately, you would think them terribly rude. But you will still answer a ringing phone in such a situation; why? What's the difference? If you are out of contact for a few hours because you are travelling there is very little that is so urgent it cannot wait; as recently as 20 years ago it would have had to, since it is within that relatively short length of time that mobiles have become prevalent.

So far as I can see, allowing people to use their phones on board a plane is totally unnecessary and in terms of customer satisfaction a backward step. It will disrupt other passengers that wish to be quiet or to sleep, will remove the pleasure of travelling and will increase yet again the amount of time that the world can intrude and further pressurise us. Unless they are thinking of segregating the plane and having a 'quiet zone' and possibly only allowing outgoing calls and not incoming, it will make me think twice about flying with Virgin again. Which would be a shame, because on the one time I have done so, it was a very pleasant experience.

Electronic jingles and beeps drive me mad

I am fast growing to hate electronic jingles, and in particular the Nokia telephone tune.

About a month ago we all had our desktop phones at work replaced with little mobile Nokias. They work fine, but their little “dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah, dah” tune is really starting to get up my nose. There are 120 of us in my office, it’s a big open plan space, and almost every single person has the standard jingle on their phone.

There was a MORI survey a few weeks ago of 10,000 people, which is a massive survey group, asking them which electronic jingles they recognised and could name the company. Unsurprisingly, Nokia and MacDonalds came in the top three. I can’t remember what the other one was, but I’m sure it was something equally inane.

When asked as part of the same survey which advertising jingles people could remember and which they could identify the product or service for, the most recognisable were those irritating ones for insurance companies or money web sites such as moneysupermarket.com and confused.com. Top two in the irritating league of images were the fat moustachioed ‘Go Compare’ opera singer and the nausea inducing Meerkats of comparethemarket.com.

I cannot count the number of times I have sat in a train listening to someone’s annoying overspill sound from their headphones and in the end resorting to listening to my own music to block it out, despite wanting to sit there in peace and quiet.

The world is full of noise, and it's getting worse. The number of places that you can go to get a restful or peaceful time, or simply to sit without being disturbed by electronic noise is getting less and less. I once had to sit on a plane next to a child who had an electronic game with them to keep them amused – not unreasonable in itself – but one which kept giving off electronic beeps and an annoying jingly tune when the kid managed to catch a ball or something from the pixies or whatever imaginary creature was featured in the game being played. It drove me nuts; I put up with it for about half an hour and then asked the parent if they could switch the sound off. All I got was abuse, and so I moved seats – luckily the flight was not full.

I hate unnecessary noise. There is nothing better than a peaceful garden with just birdsong and the sound of a gentle breeze in the trees, or an empty beach with only the lapping of waves on the shore. I dislike background noise in bars and restaurants; that isn’t why I have gone there – I have gone to enjoy a drink and conversation with friends, not inane musack. Slot machines constantly pinging away are guaranteed to get me out of a pub in record time and I find it very difficult to hear with lots of loud music or chatter in the background, so now don't bother to go to parties. I'm not anti-social, I just don't see the point if you can't talk to people properly. 

I am on the verge of becoming a hermit simply to get away from the noise. And it distresses me that teenagers seem unable to function without it. They are constantly plugged into their i-pods or phones with bass throbbing out of the headphones at what must be ridiculous volumes doing their hearing no good at all.

I am perfectly happy at home on my own with no telly, radio or music on and just a good book and purring cat for company. The opportunity is getting rarer and rarer, but I won’t give up. I will continue to seek out the times and places where it is quiet and restful. And if I can’t find them, I will jump off a cliff rather than go mad with all the electronic beeps and tunes we are subjected to. They will soon drive me insane!

Aren't mobile phones wonderful?

Isn’t the mobile phone a wonderful invention? It has had so many benefits, tapping into our need to communicate, giving parents a degree of reassurance about where their offspring are, enabling us to tell the world the minutiae of our daily lives whilst we are on the move via social networking sites.

There is no doubt that mobile telephony, along with the contraceptive pill, the world wide web and the motor car, will stand as one of the great inventions of the 20^th century. It is something that has benefited the masses and, unless you want a luxury model with hundreds of web minutes and one which makes the tea as well, is affordable to the vast majority.

The downside is that the mobile phone has bought out the worst side of human beings in terms of manners and behaviour, and has placed more stresses and pressures on our every day lives as well. Below are just a few of the irritating traits and annoying habits which I see every day:-

·         The obvious one – people talking too loudly whilst in the company of others or at length in a public place such as a restaurant. Shut up - it’s RUDE!

·         People talking about incredibly personal things such as their health, their financial circumstances or their relationships in a similar way. I don’t want to know and it’s embarrassing, but I can’t help hearing.

·         People that walk along in a busy environment (such as Victoria Station) whilst trying to text. Look where you are bloody well going and get a move on!

·         Irritating ring tones, often of rap music, played at top volume. This may be a surprise to you, but not all of us think it’s cool. Most of us think you’re a w****r!

·         ‘Personal’ music stored on phones and played too loud through inadequate headphones, or played through the speaker somewhere like the beach or the park. The clue is in the old fashioned name – it’s a PERSONAL music player!

·         People breaking off from speaking to someone to engage in a phone call when it rings, and totally ignoring the person they were talking to for an extended length of time. Would you do that if someone came up to you face to face? No, you would ask them to wait!

·         Children with their phones at the dinner table, even on special occasion, continually checking them just in case someone has rung/texted. Listen up guys, you’re not that important!

·         (My) children who are constantly on their phone to their mates and then don’t pick up when I need to get hold of them.

·         Rampant commercialism with encouragement from greedy technology companies for us to spend our hard earned cash on an up to date model even though the one we have is only a few months old. Why not try saving the planet and making sustainable phones or just selling us a new battery? Oh, and make all the chargers the same, will you?

·         Shocking waste. We are a throw away culture and mobiles sadly are a disposable product. I wonder how many old handsets and lithium batteries there are knocking around in our homes and in municipal waste dumps?

Don’t get me wrong, I like my mobile (I have a blackberry) and the sheer convenience of it is something which I would desperately miss if I had to do without it. But I can do without it and sometimes consciously do so – when I am at home, for instance it is switched off. If you need me when I’m at home, and you are someone I want to talk to, you will have my landline number so ring me on that. When I’m on holiday, I don’t carry my mobile with me, I just check it twice a day, and the sense of freedom that gives is fantastic. Occasionally, after a busy week, I will unplug the landline, switch off the mobile, disconnect the doorbell and shut myself and The Hubby away from the world for the evening with a bottle of wine, a nice dinner and some candles and I cannot tell you how therapeutic that is. Try it – you’ll see.

On balance, mobile phones probably are a good thing, it’s just that most of us need educating in how to use them for the good of ourselves and others. Is there an opening there I wonder? It might be worth a try…..

Too much technology

Clearly, lots of people have been given gadgets for Christmas.

Today was the first real day back at work for lots of people. The trains were pretty empty last week, but crammed this morning. I have never seen so many people with i-pads, Kindles and new phones (trying to work out how they work).

I have to confess to being a bit of a philistine about stuff like this. That is despite managing the IT team at work (embarrassingly, I got a new work mobile phone and laptop last week and I had to ask one of my techies how to turn them on. My street cred has taken a considerable tumble!) and having quite a bit of technology at home.

I love the feel of a new book, and the smell of fresh paper knowing you are the first one to turn the pages is a constant pleasure. We have so many books in our house, it's like a library. Until very recently when its battery packed up, I had an ancient but perfectly servicable Nokia as my mobile. Virtually all it did was make phone calls and send texts. It could take a photo of grainy quality in an emergency (such as a prang in the motor) but otherwise I prefer a separate camera with a nice clunky shutter (although I must say digital is a great advance over film, particularly when you are a crap photographer like me. Did you hear Kodak has filed for receivership?). I do have a lovely high spec light weight laptop, but only because I take it to Greece with me to write my panto scripts and watch a DVD on the plane.

In the very near future, technology is going to take over the world and if you ask me, that's not a good thing. It is a constant battle at work to get staff that sit 20 yards from each other to get up off their arses and SPEAK to each other rather than play e-mail tennis. E-mail is so often misinterpreted; many's the time I have been caught out by sending an unwise e-mail or ill thought through phrase which has caused upset or offence.

Much to my regret, my children and step children entertain themselves almost solely through electronic devices - the TV, games consoles, their phones and the computer. I don't mean they're couch potatoes - they do go to the gym and play sports - but they don't read, they don't want to go for walks and the thought of playing an old fashioned game fills them with horror. These days we have lost the art of talking to each other. I make myself very unpopular at family do's if we host them by banning telly, because once it is switched on no one talks and there is no interaction. We might as well all be in different houses. So it gets switched off, people talk and ultimately the day is much more enjoyable. They all have DVD or video recorders or Sky Plus boxes, so if there really is something they don't want to miss they can watch it later.

One of the greatest pleasures of going on holiday for me is no telly and no technology demanding our attention. Even the phone pisses me off sometimes - if someone walked into a room and interrupted your conversation you'd think 'How rude!', but if the phone rings we stop what we are doing and answer it. It's the same thing! When it's been very busy, we have nights in for two - we unplug the phones, turn off the mobiles, switch off the telly and ignore the doorbell. It's amazing how restful that is - try it!

I'd like to experiment with a week with no gadgets and see how we get on. Perhaps a week long power cut would do it and then we couldn't use them! I bet we'd all come out of it less stressed and happier people!