It was during the last century (in the mid '90's) that I was on my mobile phone, pretending to be frustrated, whilst stood in the doorway of a delightful Winchester patisserie with a beautiful actress. We had been Christmas shopping and I was having a lovely time.
My call was to a well-known pantomime producer, our producer in fact, who had called a rehearsal for us both that very morning at our Basingstoke theatre some half-an-hour's drive away. Our panto was up and running and… we thought… had settled in nicely, so we were a bit baffled as to what we were going to rehearse especially as we had very few scenes together.
Happily, one of the stage management team had tipped us off that there wasn't really a rehearsal and the rehearsal call was a 'wind-up'... and... anyway, the theatre would be locked... and... there would be no stage management support there either... hmmm... 🤔
So... the phantom rehearsal became a Christmas shopping trip in picturesque Winchester instead.
As we wandered together around Winchester an idea sparked and then rapidly grew... I had a new mobile phone in my pocket, the battery was freshly charged and there was a good network signal in town... so... our call to our producer went something like this...
Me: Er, hi, we're at the theatre, and there's no-one here, it's locked. We've been waiting for over half an hour at the Stage Door and we're freezing... what time are you coming to rehearse us?
Producer: Ah... (embarrassed cough) you're at the theatre?
Me: Yes, and we're both frozen, aren't we? (she agreed loudly and may even have sworn at him... thinking about it, though, she was far too polite, so it was probably me that swore... yes, it was sure to have been me!).
Producer: ... and there's no-one there?
Me: Well, no, where are you? You told us to be here at 10:30?
Producer: I'm, erm, not there...
Me: Yes, we can see that!
The back and forth of this went on for a few minutes before we decided to tell him where we really were... that we knew the 10:30 rehearsal call was a joke, so we'd gone out together shopping instead. The call ended with us all wishing each other a lovely day and with the producer promising to get his revenge! Then we went into the patisserie and had gingerbread cappuccinos and chocolate cheesecake (or something over-richly similar!).
Now, I should explain that this was very early days for me as a mobile phone user and it had only just dawned on me, as we wandered round, that we could tell someone where we were whilst we were somewhere else entirely... this new idea really tickled me at the time and the wind-up opportunity it offered was irresistible.
It was my first big realisation about mobile phones and their double-edged sword-ery because, "you can be reached wherever you are"... wherever that may be... and you can have a conversation from anywhere where there's a network signal. The days of telephone calls anchoring you to a known location were gone!
Incidentally, where's the most embarrassing place you've answered a mobile phone?
C'mon... fess up in the comments below, or reply to this email! I’d love to hear your story! 😂
As a new mobile phone user in my thirties, suddenly a whole new range of pranks became available, although it hadn't always been that way... (I kind of need one of those wavy screen effects that indicates a flashback... can you just imagine it for me? Thanks 👍). My early relationships with telephones were very different...
My parents had a telephone, a 'landline', like the above, but it was a nice, dark red. It sat, somewhat uncomfortably, in the corner of our living room diagonally opposite the TV, like an expensive ornament, that mustn't be touched because it cost a lot of money and we weren't rich.
As a youngster, I learned that a telephone wasn't a toy, it was there for emergencies, not for fun, and that calls should always be kept short and to a minimum.
After a year, or so (as I undoubtedly misremember 😀) an opportunity to reduce the rental cost presented itself in the shape of a 'party line' agreement. This meant sharing our phone line with a neighbour about five houses down who used their phone often... we knew this because on the odd occasion that we decided to use our phone, we would tentatively pick up our handset and generally hear them in the middle of a conversation... so then we would gently replace our receiver whilst trying not to be heard (which, in fact, was futile because you could always hear a 'click' when the other party picked-up, or put-down, their receiver, as well a change in the overall ambience caused by their room sound 😅).
So, the party line was OPEN to both users, and whilst it was sometimes inconvenient having to guess when the other party had hung up so that you could use the phone, it was just how things were, and, of course, there was the cost saving on the rental. I don't really remember when this arrangement ended, but it was maybe around my mid-teens when I was hopelessly in love with a girl called Anne.
Anne's mother had a telephone, too, and Anne wasn't afraid to use it, so we indulged in those long teenage telephone calls rehearsing 'deep and meaningful' conversation ahead of the real thing before adulthood inevitably landed.
During those heady, and somewhat breathless (for me at least) evenings on the phone…
"you've been on that phone for over an hour, we aren't made of money you know!"
I was able to picture, with some degree of certainty, the lovely Anne sat at her mum's phone... Of course, given that it was a fixed line, she had to be there, and somehow there was a warm certainty about that that made it all feel cosy and homely in a way that has since gone away.
Now, if you're still with me (and if you are, wow! Thanks! 👍) it may well have occurred to you that I was exploring my 'chatting-up' deep and meaningful conversation skills on a phone in my parents living room whilst they watched something on TV like Crossroads (for those of you having a nostalgic moment about Miss Diane, Meg Richardson and Benny, check out the theme tune below… gave you a twinge, huh? 😆) incidentally, about 30 seconds in, there is a red phone used that is the twin of the one we had at home! Wow! Coincidence, huh???
Where was I...?
Oh yes...
No, I wasn't in the living room being a teenager in love, I was in my mother's bedroom (don't tell Post Office Telecommunications, but she knew an ex-telephone engineer, and he fitted an extension free of charge!) listening for any hint that my adored felt the same about me... and... maybe… I simply missed it... guys do, don't they? 😉
I remember being fascinated by the whole telephone thing and how I could have a conversation, with a piece of plastic to my ear and mouth, with someone in a different house, town, or even country. I was amazed when I learned that conversations with Americans took place over a big, fat trans-Atlantic cable! Looking back now, with the advances we've seen since then, it all seems a little naive, but, hey, I was a teenager in a very different world where satellites were still amazing and had instrumentals written about them (name that tune!).
Speaking of the Americans (hi American friends/readers 👋) I was always very envious of the lo-o-o-o-o-n-n-n-n-ng curly phone cords attached to their handsets which would enable them to walk around their house (and possibly into their neighbours too!) when having a conversation, whilst ours in the UK always felt short enough to pull the whole thing to the floor (yep, been there, got the t-shirt) if you turned your head a little too sharply 😳
When I look back on those years now, and the amount of time I spent talking on the phone, I realise that that was always where I was the most confident talking to others. I never much enjoyed face-to-face with my peers (more about this in a later post) being very shy and lacking in self-confidence (definitely stuff for a later post, but I will warn you when it happens!) and tended then, as I generally do now, to avoid large, social gatherings, much preferring the company of a few close, and trusted, friends.
The telephone was a safe place, if things went badly I could always hang up (although I don't remember doing this until I was much older). There was also the conceit of imagining my caller/recipient finding me fascinating, without having to actually face the truth, because I couldn't see the look of boredom on their face as they looked around trying to find anything else to do within the very short range of their handset cable 😀 I decided that I was more fascinating to listen to, than look at, and the phone then became my main tool for communicating with others.
Well... this IS a long post, much longer than I expected when I planned it out, so... I have split it into two parts... part 2 will be with you next Saturday where I will take you to a frosty school playground in Basingstoke, dressed as the pirate Jolly Roger, freezing my bits off on a winter's Saturday morning, whilst a guy with a car battery attached to a handset paced around looking for a signal...
… to be continued next week...
I made another thing...
After La Catsita, which was a tricky, albeit fun, job I wanted to make something lighter and quicker, so I made something that will help me a lot when I'm in my outdoor workshop.
I am always short of storage space, which often means piling things into boxes with the typical result that things disappear for lengthy periods of time and are generally undiscoverable when urgently needed!
Amongst these things are my chisels... so... I made them their own box, so that they are always visible when needed (and I'm going to need them a lot soon because I am going to teach myself mortise and tenon joinery whilst building a bench out of a recycled bedhead and footer... hang on in there, it's gonna be a long job 😅).
This was also built using wood that I had saved from an old set of cupboards and drawers (see picture 1 above) and a spare kitchen drawer handle, plus 1,80€ magnets, 0,95€ hinges and a 0,75€ clip.
My wife did the printing for the lid on her Cricut in black glitter vinyl (she loves the idea of glitter on a manly tool box! In fact, she told me that she had read somewhere that sawdust is 'man glitter' 🤣) and I love it!
I'm really pleased with the result, and it has already been useful for a quick repair job.
I've been enjoying these things since my last post, and am sharing them in the hope that you will too...
please note that these are not affiliate links, so I don't profit from your clicking on them
Here are a couple of things I've been into since my last post...
Podcast: Imaginary Worlds: 100 Years of Weird Tales
While I was preparing lunch the other day I listened to this great podcast which was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Weird Tales magazine. I enjoyed it so much, that I ordered a hardback copy (weirdly 🤪 much cheaper than the paperback one!) of Weird Tales: Best of the early years 1926-27... which I can't recommend enough 👍 click here for a link to this episode, or see the following summary from their podcast page...
When the March 1923 issue of Weird Tales hit newsstands, many people didn’t know what to make of this new magazine. But 100 years later, Weird Tales has had a huge influence on modern day sci-fi, fantasy and horror. I talk with authors John Locke and Will Murray, former Weird Tales editor Darrell Schweitzer, current [Weird Tales editor Jonathan Maberry, and art collector Steve Korshak about how a scrappy publication often on the verge of bankruptcy inspired a cultural revolution.
HBO Max: Last of Us
This was a bit of a slow-burner for me... (if the hype around this has passed you by, check out the official trailer below…
For the first couple of episodes I sat thinking about a book I'd read a few years back... but couldn't remember the name of... when I went searching for it, I discovered it was the Pulitzer Prize winning The Road, Cormac McCarthy; 2007 which I'd loved... The promotional blurb from Barnes & Noble for The Road...
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
And finally...
... whilst I am in a telephonic frame of mind, check this out!!!
I can't wait! I'm a sucker for these types of films and, let's be honest, Blackberrys are now "so last century", BUT... I so wanted one back in the day!!!
Until next time, wishing you all love, light and laughter, and I'll see you next week a week earlier than usual! 💗
Thanks for reading When I'm 64...!
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