Authors Electric

No, not the title of my next bestseller, although you never know... it could be the Next Big Thing. A recent report by media regulator Ofcom that half of 10 year olds now own a smartphone, rising to 83% of teenagers, makes me wonder how on earth I survived my childhood without one. Telephone box by McKay Savage from London, CC When I was 10, I did not have a phone of any sort. Nor did my mum and dad. There were no mobiles on sale in the UK (it would be another year before Motorola launched its huge handheld prototype). They would not have been much use, since there were no phone masts and no wi-fi, just landlines... and even they were seen as a bit of a luxury. If I wanted to phone a friend, I walked five minutes from my house and up the hill to the red telephone box on the corner, where I listened to the "pips" and forced coins into a slot before it would connect me to my best friend's landline. The value of that conversation was high. In fact, it was only anoth...

Since the beginning of August, I have been without incoming calls on my landline . I can call out with no problem, and the broadband is (mostly) there when I want it, but hardly anyone can actually call me. Ringing my number results in a message saying "you have dialled an incorrect number" or "invalid number" or  - rather more cryptically - three electronic beeps. The only exception to this rule seems to be when my phone provider rings to test the line or to apologize - they can get through just fine. Rather annoyingly, as it turns out, so can other call centres (so far a couple of random telemarketers and a robot survey) - although I have to admit things have been rather peaceful on the unsolicited calls front lately, so I assume most of them are getting blocked, just like my friends and family. The saga of investigations into this mysterious phenomenon could fill a whole book. Suffice to say that I have almost forgotten what my landline phone sounds like, to s...