TELEPHONES

 Dear Harry,

I'm trying to remember where the telephone was in the Rectory at Aspley Guise during the war. I just can't place it. We must have had one. Perhaps it was used to rarely in those days that I can't remember where it was located. Same with the Vicarage at Braughing. The first telephone I can actually remember in any of our houses was at Sharnbrook. It was on a shelf at the far end of the hall, by the door to the kitchen. Only one, of course. Who would had more than one phone in a private home? A big black receiver placed on the main, boxy body and attached to it by a long, woven cord. 

Our telephone number was three digits, as much as was needed for the entire village.  Anything outside the village--to Bedford, say, a few miles to the south--was a toll call. Anything further required the assistance of an operator. Toll calls could get expensive, so we kept them very brief. No chit-chat. And there was a box that stood beside it with a coin slot in the top so that people (we had boarders in those days) could put the money in to pay for their calls. It was an honor system.

You'd be amazed, Harry, by my telephone today. I carry it around with me, in my shirt pocket! It's flat, smaller than one of those packs of twenty cigarettes--Players or Senior Service--and it weighs not much more. My number is ten digits, including an area code. And each country has its own code, so that I can dial direct, any time, day or night. Except you don't dial, these days, you punch in numbers on a little keyboard. England's country code is 44. I can call Matthew any time I want. Or the grandchildren. Better still, I can "Facetime" them. Imagine, the front of the phone is a screen where I can see their faces as they're talking! 

But that's just the beginning. On my telephone, I can check the weather. I can summon up a radar map to see what weather conditions are headed out way. I can check the stock market in New York or London or Japan, minute by minute. I can write letters to my friends and family; I send them off with a click and they reach the recipient instantaneously. I can read any newspaper, anywhere in the world. I can read more books than you'd find in your local library. I can watch television, movies, news. I can play games (Peggy would love the different versions of solitaire!) I can go to the market and buy my whole list of food, to be delivered to my door. I can order food from local restaurants. I can tell the time or see the weather in any art of the world. I can take pictures with my telephone, Harry! I don't have to send them off to be "developed" and wait a week for the prints to be returned. I can see the images instantaneously and send them out to be printed on the machine I have in my office. I can do all this "remote", wirelessly, without having to connect at all!

And all the above is just to scratch the surface of what this tiny, hand-held device can do. 

So yes, Harry, you'd be amazed. I am myself amazed. But this kind of "progress" comes at a cost. Like everyone else I know, I'm tied to my telephone. I'm easy to reach, even by people I don't know, even by people trying to sell me things or get me to vote for one politician or another. It's a constant source of annoying pestering. Worse, the thing is addictive. Go out to a restaurant these days and you'll find that half the people there are not talking to anyone, not even those who share their table, they're glued to the little screen on their telephone. Walk down the street, it's the same. Everyone walking along paying more attention to their phone that to what's happening all around them. People actually get killed that way! 

So this instrument that was supposed to connect people has the opposite effect. It's alienating. It no longer serves, it lords it over us, demanding constant attention. All in all, Harry, I'm beginning to think I'd rather have the telephone that sat on the shelf at the back of the hall in the vicarage at Sharnbrook. 

With love, Peter