“I think we should go off our phones for Lent when the family is together,” I announced, a week into the said period of self-sacrifice and reflection.
“That’s easy for you to say. Your phone has died,” my husband objected reasonably.
It had indeed. That most dreaded of all 21st century curses had befallen me. My trusty Samsung S4 (other makes and models are available) had given up the ghost, so to speak, on election day, unable to cope with the effort of sending a picture of me and my baby daughter at a polling station. (Had it been on Brexit polling day I may have taken it as a more sinister sign…)
The enormity of what had befallen me didn’t hit immediately as it was the least of our problems on a day that included the adults voting at two different polling stations, MMR injections at the circle of hell that is `open clinic’ for the three-year-old and a trip to Argos to pick up the miracle blackout blind that we had ordered, convinced it would solve all our baby sleep problems.
In fact I popped into the phone shop as an afterthought because we happened to be passing.
It was there that the worst was confirmed. The phone had packed up. All data was irretrievable.
Deciding I didn’t want to spend half an hour arranging a new contract with two tired children, I left the shopping mall tenderly cradling the now-defunct phone, planning to `get it sorted out’ first thing in the morning.
Of course that didn’t happen. Life happened instead.
And that was the thing. Life happened.
If I had been asked before my phone died I would probably have said I couldn’t function without it. Having recently downloaded a planner app, it now tells me where I and the rest of the family are supposed to be at any given time.
It holds hundreds of precious pictures of that same family. While I still have a physical `contacts book’ for work, it is the only place I have the phone numbers of my friends and (much to my chagrin) family.
But life went on, barely interrupted.
It turns out I mostly know where I’m supposed to be at any given time, so I turned up on time to the dentist (and waited the inevitable 20 minutes).
That’s not to say there wasn’t the odd fly in the ointment, but nothing some common sense couldn’t overcome.
I had a firm arrangement of a time to meet a friend for coffee but no place had been decided on. She had recently changed offices so I couldn’t turn up and ask for her.
So I called her office instead.
“But how did you find my office number?” she asked incredulously.
“Oh, you know, we journalists have means.” (Google)
I direct-messaged another friend on Twitter to confirm an arrangement and turned up at the door of her apartment at the appointed time to her utter shock.
“Wow. You really are a journalist. How did you find this place and get in the front door and find my actual apartment?” (Asked a local for directions; happened to arrive as someone was leaving; made an educated guess on floor based on apartment number)
Sorry if I’m bursting any bubbles here for people who think us reporters have superpowers. We’ve probably just honed our lateral-thinking skills and perseverance a bit more than average.
Anyway, I wasn’t exactly `off-the-grid’ in the 10 days I didn’t have my own phone. I had borrowed a spare from my father and while I had no contacts on my SIM (why???) the odd text trickled through from friends who were cool enough not to be offended by my `Who is this?’ response, giving me a small connection to the outside world.
It’s nice to have a smart phone of my own again, but full service hasn’t returned - I still only have a handful of friends and family numbers on it – but that’s OK. If the people that were on my phone really are my friends they’ll be in touch at some point, if not then maybe it’s time for a phone book purge.
And I wasn’t being a complete hypocrite suggesting we go phone-free during the increasingly rare time we are together as a family/couple.
It had been bothering me having to repeat myself several times to be heard over the glow of the tiny screen and I had a nagging guilt myself as I mindlessly scrolled through Twitter instead of singing the nursery rhymes I know the baby loves.
So we’re giving it a go, but in truth it’s not much of a sacrifice.
