On the phone to Happy Memories

On the Phone to Happy Memories ©

By

Michael Casey

When you are on the phone you are in another world, it’s fun and you are connected, with your mum watching the second hand of the clock, because she cannot afford the phone bill. This was years ago, before mobile phones and plans and data. Or when I first visited Shanghai maybe 20 years ago ago and I rung my sister in England to wish her Happy Birthday and she was still in bed, the time difference is 7 or 8 hours depending on Season, so the cost was massive. Now phone calls are cheaper and the world is united via the phone, you can even transfer money via your phone.

So that’s one phone call and I can remember being told I could have an extra 60 seconds on the phone to Birmingham from Shanghai, now of course everybody has Apps. You have to run when the phone rings, you must answer it, nobody had answer machines. Always answer the phone, though I can remember my boss Mike Whale saying don’t answer the phone, it was for dial in on the computer, was that 40 years ago? Then at home you get an answer machine, but you can’t get it to work. So, people say I rung and left a message, they should have tied a note to a bar of chocolate and pushed it through the letter box, now chocolate does get my attention, especially Crunchie bars. Why can’t we have a 3D printer that is attached to the phone and makes chocolate bars, instead of leaving messages that can’t hear, because you have failed to master the answer machine.

You can elaborate on that thought for yourselves, all manner of stuff on your 3D answering machine. A bar of chocolate comes from the boss when he wants you to work the extra shift, a rose from your mum, and tiny wearable plastic bags come from our Lover. Avez vous des plastiques? Is actually French slang, should you ever need it whilst on holiday in la gai Paris. Though I seem to remember when I was in Paris on Valentines Day 1998, machines pour les plastic ete attache a la mur dans la rue. If I can find my Paris story I’ll post it, it’s about Food Poisoning, yes such happy memories.

We used to play games on the internal phones at work, making heavy breathing phone calls to the girls at the other end of the building. Our building was 200 metres long, on 3^rd floor in 3 buildings in fact. Then one fine day we moved to having all of us in one building, up and down like regular people. Though the company was remarkable, a true Company of Friends. We had a proper phone system installed too, remember 42 years ago, the phone systems were not all Huawei then, at the time all grey dial phones.

What about nowadays? You all have fancy phones in your pockets. Or in my case you inherit your daughters’  old phones. You may have started on  a basis  phone then the brick Nokia style, then you end up iphones. Not me though. Another thing is that the phone starts as a phone and Gee Wiz it has a FM radio on, then a basic camera is added. Finally, the phone is really a camera, a very fancy camera and video recorder, and radio too. Then as internet has arrived it became a computer which fits in the palm of your hand.

Why people spend more than 100 quid on a phone I’ll never know, the spec is getting better and better. Sound and picture quality as well as internet access. Though for me it’s the sound quality that matters most, so I can hear my music. You can have a chip inside that’ll have your entire music collection on it, and there are music streaming services too. Or get a cheap and very high quality Bluetooth speaker, what more do you need? Then you can ring your mate and sound like the Vultures in the Jungle Book, what are you gonna do? I don’t know what are we gonna do. This goes around in circles of your free WhatsApp, before you decide to meet at the off licence, where you buy a few cans of Stella, before heading for the swings in the park. Then with your music playing from your phone you are a couple of swingers getting drunk on Stella.

This is the extent of technology, if you watch 1950s black and white films, people used to come in the back way steal a slice of toast before their mate would follow him out the door, after borrowing 10 shillings from his mom. I can actually  remember a 10 shillings note, it was brown, I got one from Fr. Gallcius in the 1960s after having served a Wedding Mass as an altar boy, he was teasing me in the Middle room of our house, I think he’d given us all a lift home. I bought a compendium of games with the money, from Radfords on the Dudley Rd, where Lidl now sits. Sadly, he died of Leukaemia, I can remember his funeral and how his coffin was raised high in the church.

All these memories arrive when one link leads to another, and no doubt Fr. Gallcius would smile because I remember him. He used to have plastic rats in his pocket and frighten the mothers in the school yard behind the church. This was 1960s before, reality bit in all our lives. Fr Gallcius would also no doubt tell us to remember the Rosary, put away our phones and say the Rosary.