As a very late and reluctant-comer to mobile phones, I wonder whether I will ever learn to tell their ringing from the ringing of the real phone – the one that stays
in one place and you see in those wonderful old black and white movies, like Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.
And how will I learn to distinguish its ringing from the doorbell itself?
By the time I had got it out of my back pocket yesterday morning – for once it was actually there, and not still in some other pocket – and realised it wasn’t ringing at all, whoever had been at the front door had decided I wasn’t in: a cruel joke, as I have been in for the last ten months.
And how do people manage it when their land lines and their mobiles ring at the same time? I immediately go into panic mode: shouting ‘I can’t talk now’ down the receiver while fumbling for the mobile, only to find the person has given up and left me a message which now joins all the other unread messages, as picking up messages and texting are both skills I don’t yet have.
The apotheosis was reached the other day when, happily lost in an episode of that brilliant French soap opera, Call My Agent, I tried to answer a fictional call.
It was neither the real phone, nor the mobile, nor the doorbell. What I had heard and tried to answer was a phone (the smartest of smart phones, of course) belonging to one of the characters.
It was easy enough, to catch up on what I had missed while, inadvertently, taking part in the action. But much as I love Andrea, Gabriel and Jean Gabin (at least I can recognise barking, for what it is) I do still regret the days when even agents could carry out their mostly nefarious business without the soulless machinery of modern life.