Mobile phones

My father was discharged from hospital with a plastic bag containing 13 boxes of pills and a vague promise that a nurse would turn up at his house to help him. ‘He’ll have a package of care put in place,’ yawned a hospital functionary, who didn’t sound at all interested. But after he got home, the only package was the big bag of pills that sat on the kitchen table and a sheet with thousands of words in very small print detailing the complicated doses, which my father, who can’t see properly, was attempting to read with a magnifying glass when I arrived from Ireland. I had no more luck

The Forcan Ridge off Glen Shiel can be a tricky place this time of year. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow, but the rocks in places were encased in ice. Without crampons, an ice axe and a head for what you are doing there are plenty of opportunities to fall to your death, but I didn’t. I bagged my hills, drove back to the holiday cottage where I was staying, had supper and turned in for an earlyish night. The only casualty was my phone which I had sat on while descending a rock, delivering the fatal blow to an already cracked screen. So I emailed my wife from

‘I love learning about things’ (Amelia, aged nine). Not all children do, but many who have not experienced the pleasure of learning early come to see the point of it in later life. Like most writers, I loved books from childhood, and learned favourite pages simply by re-reading. When Thomas Hardy came along for A-level, I was so passionate about his novels that I learned whole pages by heart. But like Amelia, I also loved learning about things – places, cultures, weather, insects, trees, how coal was mined and steel made and glass blown. Ladybird Books were a great source of interest and information, and still are, though when I

My friend replied to my text with seven sets of animal paw prints, interspersed with pink hearts and rounded off with a cat face. This was in reply to me telling her it had been nice to see her when she stayed with us in West Cork. I squinted at these emojis, trying to make out whether I was looking at ‘What a lovely country house you have’ or ‘What a dump! Cats and dogs everywhere, which is obviously your thing, but I won’t be coming again’. Earlier that day, another friend replied to my message asking how she was with a burst of gold stars, some prayer hands and

I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I know who still have a landline telephone, and I am not among them. Getting one installed in my new home is feasible but why, my children ask, would I bother? I have a mobile phone, albeit a very basic one, and what more can a person need? To anyone under the age of 50, retaining a landline seems like a fogey-ish affectation. Indeed, one of my daughters has a rotary-dial handset, not as a back-up phone but as an ironic décor item. Because if you’re wearing a belt, why have braces? For mobile users there’s the back-up possibility

Last week, my mobile phone stopped working. No big deal you might think. If you can get emails on your computer, and you’ve got a landline and that old-fashioned thing, post, why, you’re not cut off, are you? There are, of course, people who wilfully eschew their phones so as to be more in touch with the present moment… birds, clouds, flowers etc. And I’m hardly a junkie. I don’t do social media. I’m a grown-up, so I’m not on Snapchat. Not having a phone should have been fine. But as I discovered, I was quickly cut out of society. First off, you can’t tell the time. Obviously, when you’ve