I’ve never cared about status symbols, because my talent is the only one I need, so of course I wasn’t concerned with mobile phones, which were once tremendous markers of rank. Since then, not having a smartphone (or pretending not to) has become a thing some high-status people boast about now that 95 per cent of the UK adult population (and a great deal of the child population) own them. Ed Sheeran claims to have dumped his in 2015, Elton John describes himself as a Luddite, while Simon Cowell sensibly told the Mail on Sunday way back in 2007: ‘It was actually stopping me from working or living properly, so I just turned it off and I went a month, three months, then a year, then two years, then three years and I love it…it’s absolutely made me happier.’ At the other end of the scale, in the same year but very ickily, Tom Cruise simpered: ‘I have no iPhone, no mobile, no email address, no watch, no jewellery, no wallet.’
If you have managers, agents and personal assistants to run everything, including crucially your social media accounts, you probably won’t need one. I like social media, and do it myself, on my laptop – but I’ve never wanted a mobile phone. I understand that people like doctors, medics and basically anyone who had had walkie-talkies in the 20th century needs them, but for the rest of us, observing my friends, I’ve noticed that it’s the least popular and the least busy who keep them on the table. I’ve taken a real pride in never, ever owning what I insist on calling ‘a portable telephone’. I’m aware that this is weird; so weird that my commissioning editor wrote back ‘First EVER??’ when I suggested the title for this essay, ‘My first mobile phone’. Yes, I’m 65 – but I’ve heard old ladies a decade older than me chattering away on them, one of them adorably saying ‘Wrap up warm and meet me at the cybercafé.’
To add to my perceived madness, since 2019 I haven’t had a landline either. Moving apartments, I was doing all the usual stuff when the issue of getting one installed came up. But the longer I left it, the more I thought it might be possible to live happily without a telephone of any kind; I’d become tired of cold-callers asking, on account of my youthful voice, ‘Is Mummy there?’ Towards the end I became so incensed at being mis-generationed that I would sometimes snap: ‘No, Mummy isn’t here, and there’s two reasons why not. Firstly, because she died 20 years ago – and secondly because I’m practically a pensioner, you clown!’ On the subject of loved ones, nothing can perpetuate a disagreement like a drunken phone call; at least with drunken emails you can make sure they’re perfectly worded and thus escape with a modicum of dignity. Then there are the phone scams; being media-savvy is no protection, as the winner of Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards a few years back was cleaned out by a phone scam the morning after.
‘But what will you do in an emergency?’ people asked. ‘I will stick my head out of the window and call “I am Julie Burchill and I require assistance”,’ I replied grandly. As it turned out, when I realised I was dying on 17 December, I dragged myself like a wounded beast onto the landing of my apartment block and called in my loudest, cutest voice: ‘HELP MEEEE!’ I was soon in an ambulance speeding towards the surgery that would save my life – and remove my ability to walk.
When I was a nifty 55-year-old I wrote a bold piece called ‘Why I’ll Never Own a Mobile Phone’; now I stare with mixed feelings at the one my friend Angi presented me with on my first week out of intensive care, 18 months pre-paid, no ifs or buts. ‘My First Mobile Phone!’ (Sounds like a Janet & John book for the Anxious Generation.) It’s a Swedish model made by Doro, who, to quote Wikipedia, are ‘an assistive technology company focused on improving the lives of seniors’. I’ll be a pensioner in July, so that sounds about right – and now I guess I’m a member of the disabled community too, so owning one isn’t a choice but a necessity, as it serves as a panic button too. I remember when the only time I used to panic was when my dealer went on holiday.
I realised with a spark of both guilt and glee that there was no one I wanted to call
My Doro looks lovely and minimalist, offering no chance of falling down rabbit holes (I can use my laptop for that!) and I’m beyond grateful to Angi for being so generous and decisive. But I don’t feel a new vista of freedom opening up, as other mates predicted I would; I feel forced to join the herd. Though I know that the herd is sometimes the safest place to be, I’ve always been repelled by how stupid mobile phones make people look, especially when they’re yapping away ceaselessly into them in the street or staring gormlessly at them, unable to make any decision, however minor and irrelevant, without constant affirmation from these lame grown-up comfort blankets. I’ve lost count of the number of unattractive men I’ve seen ignoring the beautiful girls with whom they’re ostensibly dining as they stare with grim devotion at their mobiles; it’s so sad seeing these girls turn up the vivaciousness and charm, only to be rewarded by resentful grunts until they, too, give up and take out their mobiles. My husband, Mr Raven, has never had a portable telephone either – we goaded each other on in our disobedience, as we’ve done in so many areas of life – and I do think that this has had a beneficial effect on the way we still entertain each other in restaurants even after 30 years.
Now it looks like he will probably get one too, as everything from banking to travelling is becoming such a wearisome obstacle course without one of these hand-held tracking devices. But if we keep our devices simple enough, will we still be able to share that delicious feeling of superiority we once felt when the streets were suddenly full of ‘zeeple’ (zombie people), staring at their phones in a simpleton’s trance instead of watching where they were going? Or will we have to meekly succumb to the horrible reality that without one, we’d rendered ourselves unfit for modern existence? The last time we went abroad, before Covid, our print-out of ticket numbers was pored over suspiciously by the airline check-in staff as though we were trying to get away with something nefarious.
Alone with My First Mobile Phone for the first time, I realised with a spark of both guilt and glee that there was no one I wanted to call; Daniel visits every other day, and I like to miss him and amuse him. I will always believe that mobile phones make couples far more boring. I’d be interested to see the levels of marriage breakdown before and after their mass adoption.
Looking at the dear, would-be helpful creature (who I already anthropomorphically think of as ‘Dora’) it strikes me as being a bit like the Furby I once had, who I named Janice, and liked, but killed within six months as I neglected her. I’ll use it as and when I need to in the interests of my health and safety – but I’ll guard my inaccessibility, because as some old-fashioned fool once said: ‘Elegance is refusal’. And if we ever evolve past this weird, worry-inducing, loneliness-encouraging stage of human un-development, I’ll be so proud I was a late adopter – and I’ll certainly make sure I’m an early abandoner.
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