When my ‘dumb phone’ gave up, long before ‘Corona Virus’, I wandered about incommunicado for a week or two and, slowly, little by little I began to appreciate not having to undo zips to scrabble in my pockets for the electronic ding-a-ling-ding thing vibrating against my hip or rib-cage.
Usually it would have stopped before I got hold of it.
Usually I didn’t ring back.
Apart from a couple of ‘get-the-kettle-on’ moments, when a ‘mobile’ would have been useful, on balance I was happy to rely on our land-line at home for speech communication with people too far away to hear me shouting.
And I had email on my PC! (and too many emails) so you can see I’m not totally stuck in the mud.
Then … imaginary roll of drums, curtain raised … my family presented me with a smart phone. An old, definitely not up-to-the-minute, model but a lot more sophisticated than anything I’d ever had before.
Eager supporters showed me how I could access the internet, find my way to the North Pole and do my tax accounts on it.
Ho! Ho!
As I’ve learned with other, modern electronic equipment, it was not to be trusted. I would dial (does anyone remember dialling?) a number and an unfamiliar voice would say ‘hello’ or no voice would say anything. Later, when the person I’d dialled complained that I hadn’t got back to them, I would smugly get my ‘phone out with the intention of showing them the record of my, possibly multiple, attempts to make contact. There would be no such evidence, a list of unfamiliar numbers maybe, but evidence of my attempt to call? None.
And when someone sent me a message, particularly if there was a photo attached, I would touch the screen to make it bigger or turn it to ‘landscape’ and it would disappear. And by the time we met, if I remembered, I would ask the message sender what it had all been about and they would have forgotten! If it was that forgettable, why bother in the first place? I’d probably tell them, smugly, that I’d accidentally deleted it anyway.
Well, that’s all past. I’ve got a new smart ‘phone.
A NEW smart phone!!!
I was persuaded. Not with pleas, or scornful comments about living in the iron age, much more subtle than that. It would all work so much more smoothly, it would be so much more versatile, and, I would be able to sign in to the government national health ‘talk-to-a-doctor-at-your-surgery’ scheme. I’d tried that recently, not wishing to bother them with a request for a face-to-face appointment when they’re so busy with the Covid stuff. It’s quite a steeplechase, the application process, but I managed to jump through all of the hoops (new feature in steeplechases) until it came to proof of identity. Despite the initial requirement to show evidence of who I think I am before being allowed to page 2 of the website I was now asked to take a video of myself writing a code ‘they’ had sent to my email address, with my passport or driving licence mugshot in the frame so that they could positively identify me as being who I said I was.
Maybe I could have achieved it, but at that point I gave up. I looked at my passport and driving licence and concluded that no-one would think that I was the person in the ‘photo anyway.
So this was all going to be easy on a new, smart phone.
I bought the recommended model. It came in a box with a few accessories and even fewer instructions. But, I read the instructions, charged the battery and began touching the screen, where I thought I was supposed to touch it. The first hurdle, at which I fell, was the requirement to enter my email account password.
Email account password??? I’ve been using the same email ‘system’, with the same email address for at least twenty years. Password? Does it have one? Where would I find it?
Don’t panic!
OK, I’m not given to panicking, but that doesn’t mean I’m in command of the situation, far from it.
A year or two ago, in contradiction to all the security advice I’ve ever read, I opened an alphabetically indexed book in which to record the various, and surprisingly numerous, passwords that I’ve had to create to accompany almost everything electronic that I’ve ever had to deal with. I haven’t counted but I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t at least fifty entries. And should I trust the security site, to which I subscribe, to keep them all safe? And how do I keep the key to the security site vault a secret if the only way I can remember it is to write it down?
Anyway, back to the new ‘phone.
The next hurdle was the Wi Fi account access. Ha! I knew about that, And I knew the password.
Rejected
After two more rejections I concluded that I was making a serious error, or I was entering the password for the wrong service.
At this point, Ida, my wife, noticed the swearing, shouting and smashing of furniture, which was my way of soothing my frustration, and came in to help.
We decided that the password required was that which is on the plastic card in the slot on the back of the ‘home-hub’.
It was. I entered it.
Now the demand was, again, for the email account password.
The ‘phone acknowledged the existence of my Google account (which I never use and until now never knew why I have it) but wanted me to change the password.
If you begin to sense that at this point I was losing my way you would be closer to being right than I was.
I didn’t know why my sparkly, new ‘phone wanted to be with Google as opposed to ‘Thunderbird’ but it did.
‘It will do as it’s told.’ I decided and proceeded to insert the Thunderbird account details. That didn’t work, and by now it was late and I was fed up with the whole process. And in any case I don’t have a sim card for the new ‘phone yet ‘cos the BT help line has a three-day waiting time (or something like that).
So I put the ‘phone back in its box with a sigh, and opened Thunderbird to have a look at my normal emails. Now that account is not working properly.
Goodnight, you may never hear from me again.
Southsea Storytellers 