When I didn't have a phone

I recently spent a week without a mobile phone.  My old one disappeared one Thursday afternoon, possibly dropped, though more likely swiped. Either way it was gone and it took Orange a week to send me a new SIM.  Of course, it had to be the week when I was leaving Joe with paid childcare for the first time. So for those two days the missing-limb feeling was acute.  I kept imagining phantom vibrations. Which I guess was my sense of guilt manifesting itself in a physical sensation.

Aside from this,life without a phone was just fine.  I was amazed at how little I missed it.  At times I felt a gleeful relish about being uncontactable, as if I was slipping about invisible or somehow was unaccountable too. 

There was one occasion when I really needed to make a call.  I was out and needed to speak to someone urgently.  My first instinct was to wonder whether a passing stranger would lend me the use of their phone.  This didn't seem unreasonable because having access to a phone is something I take so for granted it feels like a right.  But as I realised I was too shy to actually ask anyone, a dim memory triggered reminding me that public phone boxes existed.    

Two such boxes appeared right in front of me just as I was thinking about them.  They'd been there all the time though ordinarily I don't see them because my subconscious categorises them as irrelevant street furniture.

I made my call and hung up. Then the phone rang. I picked it up on instinct, wondering who might be calling as my hand was in motion.  In that fraction of a second my mind flitted between 'oooh how exciting, a mystery caller', 'it's probably the person I just spoke to' and 'am I being watched?' It turned out to be a recorded message offering me a possible way out of debt. It freaked me out a bit, so I quickly hung up.  I don't know whether it was a dubious debt service praying on the vulnerable or a more benevolent body trying to reach those who really need help.

It's quite sad to think about what that suggests about the kinds of calls that are made in public phone boxes these days.