Just leave me hanging on to my telephone, as Blondie almost said
‘MEDDERS, you can do this. Just give it to me.’ ‘I’m really not so sure, sweetest. I am not finding this easy.’ ‘Come on. Where is the bold, fearless man I married?’ ‘Oh dear! That wedding seems like an awful long time ago now. I know that bold and fearless man’s wife is still as lustrously, shimmeringly beautiful as ever, of course. But perhaps all that’s left of him is a shell.’
‘Rubbish. He is still bold enough to take a driver off the tee at the sixteenth, and to hell with the stubble field which awaits a hook.’ ‘I suppose so but maybe this is different.’
‘He is still fearless enough to stand up in company and perform ‘I Love a Lassie’ without instrumental accompaniment.’
‘Well that certainly is different. Singing Scottish ballads is a breeze. Giving up what I’ve been asked to give up is a head wrecker.’ ‘Enough of this nonsense. Hand it over.’
I did not hand it over. I clung to it as a shipwreck victim clings to a life-buoy. Hermione opened up her lap-top.
‘What are you doing, sugar plum?’
‘I am googling.’
‘Not airline flights, I hope. You’re not leaving me are you?’ ‘No, I am not leaving you. Not yet. I am looking up counsellors.’ ‘Counsellors?’
‘Yes, here is one who weans smokers off smoking with hypnosis.’ ‘I don’t smoke, honey bun.’
‘Here is another who tackles drug dependency by talking to his clients about childhood trauma.’
‘But I don’t take drugs, not so much as an aspirin.’
‘ That is as maybe but you are quite clearly hooked all the same. If you cannot hand it over to me for 24 measly little hours, then you evidently have a problem. Perhaps you should see this woman who counsels on a range of problems from bulimia to binge drinking. I imagine she would find your case fascinating.’
My ‘case’ as Hermione calls it arose one evening after young Persephone and I tidied up the kitchen after our evening meal. I decided to provide some background enlightenment to the housework by switching my mobile to receive a podcast about chocolate bean farms in Ghana.
However, the finer points of the podcast were lost to me as our daughter insisted on playing a programme of rackety showbiz gossip about someone called Dustin Berber (or some such) on her iPhone. Turning up the volume on my Huawei provided only temporary assistance as she countered by raising the decibels coming from her Apple. The bedlam of phone wars then devolved into a war of increasingly bitter words.
Daughter accused father of imposing his obscure tastes on the rest of the family. Father accused daughter of being preoccupied with irrelevant trivia.
She called him an authoritarian. He called her an addict and then she threw down the gauntlet.
‘I am not an addict, father, and I can prove it. I will happily set aside my phone for a whole day, if you will do the same.’
The trap had been set and I could hardly wait to call her bluff. I did not believe for a moment that she was capable of going without Instagram and YouTube for five minutes, let alone an entire day.
It is well known that teenage girls are incapable of functioning phone-less. The only reason there is no research into this matter is that researchers attempting to take a smart phones off teenaged girls has suffered withering abuse and life threatening assault.
So I felt I was safe enough when I offered to give up mine for a day on the condition that Persephone did likewise. She took the bait straight away and it was agreed that Hermione would act as referee and holder of the hardware.
Next day our school bound daughter casually surrendered the iPhone but her father found parting to be an impossible sorrow…
‘Maybe this guy can help you, Medders. He encourages people with ‘issues’ to talk to their teddy bears. Or there’s a clinic here in town where they use acupuncture to treat psychological complaints…’