Telephones are some of my least favourite innovations. They’re invasive — even if a telephone call does not involve physically entering another’s house, or, in the case of OZ, cave, it comes as close to this as possible without actually doing it. In times past, manners books wrote of telephones as something best left to close friends and family — all other correspondence would best be left to letters and notes delivered by servants. Telephones irk me enough, in fact, that I do not have a telephone at my San Francisco residence.
Recognising the nature of the world the closest thing I do have is a now very outmoded mobile phone purchased nearly 4 years ago which has only the most very basic of features and is primarily used as an alarm clock. (So… I also do not give my telephone number out to many people so the majority of telephone calls I would receive would be from telemarketers. At the end of the day there are few more irritating things) The matter of the mobile phone is yet another development in this chain of annoyances.
The home telephone, while domestically irritating, was at least limited to the home itself. Mobile phones are even more irksome. Sitting in the train, watching the world go by while drinking a cup of cocoa, is one of my favourite things to do. I might read a book or practise kanji as well while listening to music. Breaking the peace and quiet is a ring tone — a herald of worse things to come! Often the person who answers will not make short use of it. Rather, it seems as if the ultimate outcome is more often than not the inane blabbering — often at elevated voice — about nothing of any importance.
Whether it is on the train or elsewhere, these conversations often eventually divulge more personal information than would ever be considered appropriate. No, it is not of critical importance to the life of the other 10 people in the carriage that your “homie” or “dawg” was so pissed after last Saturday’s bender that (s)he walked into several walls before passing out on your front lawn only to be woken by the police, neighbours, or rain. It is also equally unnecessary to hear graphic accounts of sexual escapades. Such things are best left in private settings.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I remember a far-away Golden Age when I didn’t even have a telephone in the house and my life after the working day was over was my own.
I would be lost without a telephone – but – I have to agree it can be intrusive, and other people’s phones are exceedingly annoying.
Bravo: I do my best to live my life that way, even if many people do complain that it is near-impossible to reach me.
Boadicea: telephones to have their purpose. I’ve just never been able to understand how some people, as soon as they have some free time, immediately go on their telephone and stay on it until they have to get back to work.
We grew up without telephones in the home. We did have a tikkie* box a couple of minutes up the street if we needed it.
I’d of been about 14/15 when we got our first home phone (probably about the same time we got our first TV !), I can almost remember the number 3-1952.
*tikkie – sixpence, from the very old days (prior to the Rand) hence tikkie box = public phone box, a term still widely used today!
Point of order Soutie. I think you will find a ‘tikie’ or ‘ticky’ was actually a threepenny piece.
I agree with you Christopher. I do have both types of phones, home and mobile, but rarely use either. Infact, I have only made four calls on my mobile in the last four weeks. I only got a mobile because my previous job required it, I was dragged into the 21st Century kicking and screaming!
Fortunately I don’t have much of a social network so both phones are really only for family and golfing buddies. A necessity though I think in today’s sociaety, but one that can be moderated.
My fellow golfers think I’m odd as I always leave my mobile in a drawer at home so I never hear it.
I always have my mobile in my handbag – and never hear it!
It was way way before my time 🙂
I’d assumed that it was sixpence ’cause our old 5c piece (the small silver one) was all I ever used and had assumed that it was similar to the sixpence!
Oh buggrit, typos all over the place! Sorry Bearsy, I should wake up a little more before I type!
tickey/ticky/tickie/tiki/tikki/tikkie
ticky or tickey was an old pre-decimal British silver threepenny piece (3d, equating loosely to 1¼p). The tickey slang was in use in 1950s UK (in Birmingham for example), although the slang is more popular in South Africa, from which the British usage seems derived. In South Africa the various spellings refer to a SA threepenny piece, and now the equivalent SA post-decimalisation 2½ cents coin. South African tickey and variations – also meaning ‘small’ – are first recorded in the 19th century from uncertain roots (according to Partridge and Cassells) – take your pick: African distorted interpretation of ‘ticket’ or ‘threepenny’; from Romany tikeno and tikno (meaning small); from Dutch stukje (meaning a little bit); from Hindustani taka (a stamped silver coin); and/or from early Portuguese ‘pataca’ and French ‘patac’ (meaning what?.. Partridge doesn’t say).
Reference
Silver threepenny bits were what my mother carefully wrapped in greaseproof paper and added to her Clootie Dumpling mix as a birthday treat.
Thanks Boa and Sheons.
We also still use it in a saying for a very short person or child;
S/he’s only 3 bricks and a tikkie high
As Bearsy has just pointed out – silver threepenny bits were not in circulation in the UK in the 1950s. The last were minted in 1945.
Boadicea – There certainly was an old Portuguese coin called a ‘pataca’. I am seeing my Portuguese teacher on Wednesday ans she will know more about this. The pataca is/was also the basic unit of currency in Macao.
OZ
Still is the Macao currency unit, OZ.
I have an old banger of a mobile, which I got nearly five years ago after my son was born. It does the job – phones, in cases of emergency,but I could live without it.
The kids I work with, on the other hand, are completely addicted to their i phones and gadgets. The internet, mobile phones and Facebook can be something of a problem in education generally, if I’m honest. There is the discipline factor – kids bringing mobiles to class,the distraction factor as some kids seem incapable of concentrating on one thing for more than five minutes. And then you have the instant gratification factor, which means that if everything is available at the click of a button, there is no mental rigour, no academic thought process, no critical thinking and no imbibing of knowledge. This is, of course, a very negative view, but I do sometimes wonder if we are not becoming slaves to the machines that we thought would liberate us.
‘Ask the audience, or phone a friend?’
It’s the way you use them that matters.Mine is primarily used for texts: quick and clean method of communication without conversation!
Wow Claire,
“but I do sometimes wonder if we are not becoming slaves to the machines that we thought would liberate us.”
That is ome deep doo doos right there. Hell we could blog about that until the cows came home, went back out for a chinese, paid the gas bill, picked up their gyro and came home again. 🙂
You should defo start a seperate blog about that.
On the subject of phones however, I know people who will actually get out of the bath in a rush to answer a ringing phone. Go figure. If it isn’t convenient, that little ringy thing is not getting answered. And if it happens to be a cold call, convenient or otherwise, the idiot caller is in for a good dressing down. Grrrrr.
I had a mobile phone almost as soon as they became available. But, I’ve always made it clear that it’s for my benefit and no one elses and If I want to be ‘unavailable’ I will be. People still complain that I don’t answer it or read my messages.
My daughter has just bought an all-singing-dancing thingo to receive e-mails, surf the net and do goodness knows what else… Not for me. While I do get withdrawal symptoms when the internet goes down, I’m not that concerned that someone might have to wait a few hours before I receive their e-mails.
It took me some time to equate the ringing of a phone with someone knocking on the door unexpectedly – and some even longer time to learn that it was not rude to say “Hey I’m busy – can I call you back?”.
My mother will let her meal get cold (and inedible) simply because someone has phoned her at an inconvenient time. I’ve tried to get her to understand that people who phone her at 11.00 p.m. are b***Y ill-mannered and she should tell them that she was asleep. No way… she’ll struggle to talk to them for as long as they want.
Boa; I’m with you all the way, there. I have a friend whose work has given her all the latest gadgets – which she leaves in a locked drawer at 7pm every night.
That said, I am fascinated and mystified by the sleek, bejewelled looking gadgets that the kids have in school, and occasionally suffer a brief pang of wondering if I shouldn’t get with it, or face being on the generational scrap heap at the ripe old age of thirty…something;)
I suspect that when my phone dies, which it looks likely to do very soon, I will not replace it. Leaving the house internet free forces me to live in the moment; to feel alive, to suck in the sharp tangent air of the here and now. It sounds so basic and simple, but I think that we run the risk of losing that ability, that privilege, somehow.
And Ferret – yes, we could be here forever on this one!
Christopher: Al my phones are signed up with the National Do Not Call Register, the only unsolicited calls I get are from professional beggars (Charities and Politicians). All the phones have mute buttons and my cell (mobile) is in my pocket but always turned off unless I am making a call. It’s quiet here at the creek, but all that technology is instantly available, on my terms.
OZ: the pataca referred to the Mexican 8-real-piece/1 peso which was the work horse coin of the East Asian trade during the 19th century, it was the heir of the Mexico City Spanish “piece of 8”. Interestingly, this is also why Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements, Malaya, Borneo, and Sarawak had dollar-denominated currencies rather than pound. The British realised that the circulating currencies, dating back from the Spanish and Portuguese domination of the era, were simply too deeply entrenched into the local economies and would not easily be changed.
Cuprum: I only have a mobile phone because in a previous life I would have to commute a great deal and much of the drive would be over sparsely populated farm land. In case anything happened it would be several miles at times before the next public phone could be found.
Boadicea/Soutie: you are making me wax nostalgic about the old fractional coins. I collect them as my primary field of interest and never grow tired of them. South Africa, Rhodesia, UK, Australia, New Zealand, usw. There was just something about them which decimal coins/currency never had. If nothing else, the last British 3 pence was one of the nicest in design. The rose and badge of St George remain one of my favourite designs.
Well, it looks as if I am the token nerd at the party. I have an iPhone. It is not a phone, it is a pocket computer which also acts as a phone. I can run my business from it – with all the data baked up regularly, of course, twice in hard storage and once in the cloud, as it happens. As far as the phone thing goes, I see my grandchildren every night at bedtime, and talk to them for as long as I like – free. (When I was in China, and my daughters were at school in UK, they used to get a rationed ten minutes on a scratchy line, once per week.) So, I love my iPhone and you lot are sounding like a lot of neo-luddites.
Blaming the phones for the lack of discipline in the classroom is putting the cart firmly before the horse, Claire.
the one thing that does annoy me is people who use their phones in, for example, the cinema but, again, you can’t blame the phone, it is a tool, it’s the Rseholes who lack any shred of manners who are at fault.
I went to the theatre a couple of weeks ago and there were several kids in the row in front of me who were touching their phones at various points during the performance, lighting up the screens… facebooking I think.
If there had been a break I may have spoken to them about it… but it was a continuous performance and I didn’t have a chance. It was rude and inconsiderate of them, but maybe this new technology hasn’t yet developed an accepted general etiquette for use? And the way we should be using it in such environments needs to be spelled out?
http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/mobile-phone-etiquette.html
Don’t get me wrong, Bravo. I wouldn’t be without my mobile phone – it’s been invaluable on a number of occasions. I’m sure if I were ever in a position to need the technology of an iPhone, I’d get one – but I don’t. Nothing in my life is so urgent that I need more than instant access to a telephone.
But, it’s for my need – not some elses. I went late night shopping with my daughter last week. At 6.30 pm her boss phoned her. She told him that she was ‘doing the sort of thing people did when they were not at work’ – but he carried on talking, anyway. High-powered job or not – I think she should switch her work-mobile off once she walks out of the office – but far too many people don’t.
As for those who use phones in cinemas, theatres and (my bug-bear) libraries … hanging, drawing and quartering seems quite appropriate!
Boadicea, indeed, all of these gadgets have off switches.
I am not blaming the phones, Bravo, but merely pointing out that they are symptomatic of, and almost an extension of, a lack of discipline in schools. One of the problems cited in the school where teachers went on strike due to lack of discipline was that pupils were using mobile phones to record lessons and intimidate staff. In that situation, mobiles are a tool and a weapon for unruly kids.
On a wider level, the internet does bring a huge range of positives, not least the democratising of information and power. I’m just saying that we need to be careful; it is instant, and all encompassing, but that does not necessarily equate to empowerment, in my view.
Bravo: you said that you lived in Hong Kong for some time. What things would you recommend seeing? What would you recommend avoiding?
My husband had a meeting with a couple of Bill Gates’ employees. They were talking about their spiffy slick all-singing all-dancing mobiles phones. One turned to my husband. ‘What do you use?’
‘I use Bill Gates’ system,’ he told them. Of course they looked very impressed. Then one of them said, ‘Wait a minute. Bill Gates doesn’t use a cell phone. He gets someone else to make calls for him.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ my husband replied.
A lot of parents ‘babysit’ their children remotely via mobiles. That is why they leave them switched on in cinemas, etc. Quite unacceptable, from all points of view.
Mobile phones in classrooms? Why don’t the teachers confiscate them if the pupils use them in class?
Well, this is one way of dealing with telephones in the classroom.
Julie; they do, only to be forced to return them because they are in breach of the kids’ rights. In one inner city school that I taught in a few years ago, a teacher was forced to pay for a child’s mobile phone when it went ‘missing’ after it had been confiscated. It’s almost not worth the hassle and the risk of confiscating stuff like that.