I switched my mobile on this morning, for the first time since about yesterday lunchtime, more out of a sense of duty than any real expectation that I would have some messages. It buzzed for texts, twice. They had both been sent yesterday, the first from a colleague asking if I could possibly cover for her on Sunday because her grandmother had died, and the second saying not to worry, she'd changed her mind and would go to work as normal. I sent my condolences, and promised that I'd fill in for her if she decided she wanted me to, feeling rather mean that I had taken so long to get the messages, and she might have thought I simply hadn't bothered to reply to the first one.
There are so many ways of keeping in touch nowadays, and so many timescales at which one can do so, that it can be quite tricky being on the same wavelength as the people one knows. Anybody who knew me very well would probably not try to contact me urgently by text, knowing that I don't carry my phone with me around the house and garden, and don't even switch it on more than once or twice a day. There are not many circumstances in which anyone would need to contact me urgently. If my parents or the Systems Administrator were seriously ill then somebody would have to try and track me down, or if there was a domestic catastrophe while I was out then the SA might want me back ASAP to help deal with it, but on the whole the world carries on quite nicely without my urgent intervention. Occasionally I get a panic stricken phone call from a garden club or friendship group who have found themselves without a speaker at very short notice and are wondering if I can help out, and sometimes whoever I'm due to meet that day is ill, but that's about it. No children, no clients, no employees requiring my urgent support or supervision.
When I meet friends who still have proper jobs and they keep their phone on the table throughout lunch and check it during the meal, or worse still take calls, I understand the reason for it, intellectually speaking, but I don't like it. The great technological revolution has its downsides, and that's one of them. One advantage of being downshifted is that on the whole, when you are with people, they can have your absolute undivided attention, without the little electronic box of tricks in the corner playing gooseberry.
With most of my friends we have a tacit agreement, e-mail or text. I much prefer e-mails as the risk of confusion is so much less when you aren't trying to abbreviate things to the length of, at most, two linked texts. Some of my friends are likewise e-mail minded, so that's easy. They are all tech savvy themselves, and have partners who are technologically competent. A couple generally use texts, in both cases people who are not really into computers, and I guess they feel safer not being dependent on a laptop and internet connection over which they feel imperfect control. If I didn't have the SA I might be in their camp, though in practice I would have to get to grips with how our broadband works (when it does. It's been very patchy in the last few days) and how my laptop connects to it.
My mother has worked out that the quickest way of intercepting me for urgent assistance if she doesn't manage to actually speak to me is to leave a message on the answering machine saying 'Your father has just managed to get an emergency dental appointment for this afternoon, can you give him a lift?' or whatever it is. If I am at home I'll see the light flashing the next time I walk through the hall, and if I'm in London I won't be able to give him a lift that afternoon anyway.
My colleague and I haven't managed to mesh our preferred technologies. She is of the generation that uses a smart phone for everything. She doesn't even possess a wrist watch, just pulls her phone out of her pocket to see what the time is. I have tried e-mailing her in the past, but given that up since she checks her hotmail account even less frequently than I check my mobile. I left my phone switched on for the rest of the morning in case she texted again, sitting on the corner of the hall dresser while I cleaned the kitchen and worked my way through the whole of Trevor Pinnock's take on the Goldberg Variations.
Close to lunchtime the SA burst into the room holding my phone at arms' length, as though it might be a mildly radioactive source. The SA is in all other spheres quite techy, but developed a hatred of incoming phone calls during the last years of being shouted at by hedge fund managers almost amounting to phobia. 'Your phone was doing something'. I asked what the phone had been doing, and the SA said that it had been making that up and down noise like when it receives a call, which is a reasonable description of the Nokia ringtone. It is so many months since anybody actually telephoned me on my mobile, it took me some time to find the call register, and when I did I found I had about eight missed calls, going back to 2009. The most recent one was from a number beginning 0844, which I didn't recognise but thought an 08 number looked commercial and I probably didn't want to speak to whoever it was. Only about six people have my mobile number, and their names are all programmed in.
I rather hope I don't get a call in the next four or five hours asking if I can work tomorrow. We have friends coming to supper, and I was hoping for a congenial and late evening, followed by a lie-in, and then a return visit to Beth Chatto to buy a fern and an afternoon session with the ice cream machine. But someone's grandmother dying is a major sad event in their life, so if I have to go in then I will.
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