Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Beware lest your sins find you out. A homily that has been preying on my mind ever since I got myself a new partner in the bedroom.
No, no, don’t over-excite yourselves. That bedside companion is my new all singing, all dancing, perpetually amusing mobile phone.
How many times have I taken the high moral ground on the subject of smartphones and the way they seem permanently attached to their owners?
And then here’s me, taking my phone to bed with me. The excuse? I use it as a clock, reliable in the mornings when annoying radio presenters neglect to tell listeners the time, or get it an hour wrong.
Trouble is it doesn’t work like that. The other night, kept frustratingly wide awake by the humidity, I resorted to my phone for entertainment at 3am.
Just checking a few emails and texts. Having a quick glance to see if Google has sent me any funny messages. Then, of course, I start looking at the sports sites. Before I know it three-quarters of an hour has elapsed and I’ve still got the phone in hand and the blessed relief of slumber is no nearer.
I put World Service on the radio to distract me from the phone. There’s an hour-long programme — all about the addictive nature of mobile devices and how Americans are having to seek psychological help to break their 24/7 attachment.
I wonder what went through engineer Marty Cooper’s mind 50 years ago when he stepped on to New York City’s Sixth Avenue, looked up a fellow engineer’s number and punched it into the brick-shaped device he was shouldering?
Marty worked for the Motorola company and found it amusing to ring a friend at a rival firm. It was eleven years before the phones were sold commercially to super-rich Yuppies who loved resting them on the bar to boast of their wealth.
Our whole lives are lived by the mobile phone these days. We are scarily dependent on them. Yet, in 1973, I was phoning in football reports on landlines from grounds, thinking I was operating at the cutting edge. Once, at Millwall, I had a police escort while putting over my match report. The locals were not accustomed to losing and did not take it well.
Having a phone line booked seemed a long way from the 1800s when reporters took pigeons to the match and despatched 250 words tied to their legs, hoping they would successfully home to the office loft.
Newspapers had copy takers, typists who took down our words faithfully. The rugby correspondent of the Sunday Times claims to be the last reporter to be using this now archaic method. The advance of technology was a poor deal for copy takers who suddenly became redundant.
The concept of one device fits all, enabling reporters to write on screen, even take their own photos and send reports direct into their newspapers in a matter of seconds, was too fanciful to even consider.
Now even readers are reporters as citizen journalism becomes fact.
Meanwhile, at 94 Marty Cooper is still thinking up new ideas while fellow Americans head off for counselling. And I’ve banished my new bedroom friend to the living room at night.
Cash is no longer king
The price of everything has gone mad these days. Even fish and chips, that staple diet of the British, is widely a tenner and the two pounds you spent on a couple of pints of lager 25 years ago will barely buy you a dribble in the bottom of the glass.
It is 25 years since the £2 coin was launched. Back then you could put five litres of fuel in your car when today the same money would get you barely a litre.
A £2 coin was worth something. It had purchasing power. The cashless society was not even a dream in a banker’s eye.
It is evidence of the shrinking value of money and the rising cost of living and we can expect that value to diminish even further in the coming months.
Your only hope of getting value from a £2 coin is if you discover one of the rare ones in your change. These have errors printed on them and can fetch up to £500 when bought by collectors.
I remember when Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, told us the pound in our pocket would keep its value in any recession. It wasn’t true of course. They told us porkies then, too.
I don’t think any politician would dare to say the value of our money is safe, not with the £2 coin as an example.
High brow protests
Say one thing for the Just Stop Oil protests. We’re getting a better class of idiot these days.
While other protest groups target big sports events, they pitched up at Glyndebourne last week to halt the opera. A spokeswoman said they had spent “a pretty penny” on best seats.
So, as Animal Rising threaten sport and slow marchers annoy Londoners, here we have protestors attending a production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. If that ain’t culture I don’t know what is.
