I have many random thoughts rushing around my head this morning, lots concerning the piece of equipment above. Recently, our 'new' cordless phones, after months of limping along, stopped working completely. My Husband and I 'discussed' replacements and disagreed over the usefulness of an old fashioned plug-in to the wall phone.
I insisted that the battery life of cordless phones drove me mad and that living in a small village prone to power cuts, having no form of communicating with the outside world when the electricity stopped providing was ridiculous.
He pointed out that power cuts are not THAT common and that in an emergency we have neighbours, mobiles and a call box in the village and raised the point that sitting attatched to a phone would soon become annoying.
I laughed at that idea, after all I grew up in a rural area with no phone at all until I was in my teens and we had survived perfectly well attached to a wall before cordless phones became the norm. I even proposed that it would be refreshing to NOT multi-task but to sit quietly in one place and listen whole hearted-ly to the person on the other end of the line!
I won.
We have owned the phone above for a month and while I still stand by all the arguments I made I have to admit that I was wrong.
It must be evolution! I find it impossible to sit and talk and relax, as tea slowly burns, or the washing gets wet on the line, or a nose needs blowing, or the bag for swimming remains unpacked....... I flinch every time the phone rings, dreading a long conversation that will eat into the short time I have available to do what is needed. Instead of being able to enjoy every chat, I just rush through it, counting in my head the minutes disappearing.
Did my Mother always feel this way? or was it easier to make space? Maybe without a phone at all life was a gentler place, friendships kept afloat by letter and in person. Maybe my teenage conversations that lasted for hours and hours saved my Mum from the panic I experience - no one else had an opportunity to call....
The more I think about it, the more complex and interesting the whole situation becomes - I could write a book! But in the mean time, I think I might just eat humble pie and ask my Husband to purchase another phone - a cordless one. My life has obviously evolved further than I thought and I am not sure all that sitting down to talk is doing good things to my behind!
