The Systems Administrator ordered the new telephones, but I got the job of setting them up. The SA said that if I did it then I'd know how they worked, which is true. I set the last ones up, and they were among the few items of technology in the house that I was confident of working. Indeed, I used to have to explain the incoming call register to the SA, which was a rare role reversal, along with my comparative mastery of the washing machine. Otherwise, the integrated blue ray TV, the old flat screen TV with Sky box (which the SA bought years ago to convalesce in front of after knee surgery), the setting for the boiler (which it is difficult not to accidentally rotate while cleaning the kitchen), the timer for the AGA, the other timer for the central heating, and what to do when broadband goes down, my laptop crashes, or the printer won't print, are all more or less baffling.
The base station and charger for the two new phones both come with ridiculously long cords. I dislike power cables and their capacity to wrap themselves around everything. It's one of the main reasons why I loathe vacuuming, although I will happily spend hours painstakingly unwinding the stems of clematis leaves that have fastened themselves in the wrong place. It took quite a long time to extract the old phones, as their cords seemed randomly wound round the flexes to various reading lights plus the cable to the Sky box. I dislodged disheartening quantities of cat fur in the process poking around behind the furniture in the hall, and had to cut through the electrical tape holding the cables from the old base station into a neat bundle. The cord from the new phone is still a straggling mess, because I didn't have any tape to redo it.
The new phones have one very useful extra feature, as you can set them to send international and number withheld calls straight to answer phone. If it is a real person calling, like the broker who invited the SA to the retirement dinner the other week from a withheld office number, they can still leave a message, as the broker did, simply because we were both out when he rang. Cold callers with dodgy sales pitches probably won't bother. It is annoying in the middle of cooking to have quickly washed your hands and rushed out to answer the phone, or galloped across the front garden to get there in time, only to find it is somebody with a spurious line about compensation for PPI mis-selling.
The other improvement is that now the phones share their contacts list, so I only had to type it in once. With the old phones I had to enter it separately into each handset. Our landline contacts list is short, since we are both more email and text people. Apart from our relatives it has more of my friends in than the SA's, because several of them do call from time to time about beekeeping business, while the SA seldom bothers to even write people's landline numbers in our phone book. Going through the phone book is a thought-provoking process, normally experienced once a year when doing the Christmas cards. There are some new names, people I've met through the music society, like, and have started to see independently of the concerts and committee meetings. That's encouraging, but the former colleague who died three years after her cancer diagnosis is depressing, as is the current colleague who has vanished without leaving any contact details. One friendship failed to develop, and a few names from my City days have reduced to such nominal presences in my life that they probably don't justify a stamp, come this Christmas.
The new phone has already intercepted one international call. I was disappointed that it did it while we were out, so we didn't hear it. The SA objected that the whole point was that I wouldn't hear it anyway, but that's not what I meant. I wanted to have been in the room at the time I subsequently saw the call had been, so that I knew it hadn't rung then, like Ivor Cutler demanding to know who was not knocking at his door.
All I have to do now is set up our greeting on the answer machine. I've put off doing it, because I always dislike hearing my own voice, too much like a cross between Mrs Thatcher and Fergie, while I currently have either hay fever or a slight cold, which has made it even huskier and more nasal than usual.
Addendum I suppose the real question is why we still want a landline. Age. Habit. Because it is the number in the telephone directory. The one that club organisers wanting a lecture on woodland conservation or gardening use. The public number available to anybody, unlike our mobile numbers, which are private. In case the mobile signal is bad. For long calls (when your grandfather died of a brain tumour it makes you cautious about putting radiation sources close to your head for too long). But mainly because we both grew up in the days when houses had one telephone fixed to the wall, in the hall, and the idea that a proper house has a telephone number attached to it is irredeemably rooted in both of our minds. Under-thirties probably won't understand.
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