How losing my smartphone rang in some positive changes

LAST Wednesday, after a seven-day break, I rejoined the modern world. For a full week I had done something frightening, shaming, yet ultimately liberating. I had been without a phone.

This strange period started in Washington DC in a taxi bound for the airport. I had spent the journey doing e-mails on my phone, which I put on the seat to pay the driver, only to leave the cab without it.

In airport security a few minutes later, I reached in my bag. No phone. I emptied it on to the floor. Nothing. My heart started to race, my breathing turned shallow and I was prickling with sweat.

I’ve lost my phone, I wailed at the person next to me. Half-a-dozen people overheard, and an impromptu crisis team formed.

Someone tried to ring my number, but it was on silent. Others asked if I knew the name of the cab company and if I’d paid by card? No and no, I said.

Already I’d learnt two things. People in general are very nice. And on the scale of human calamities, losing your phone is now seen as up there with cardiac arrest.

Two hours later, queuing for a taxi in Boston, I felt the need to tell my story to the man next to me.

He asked for my Apple log-in details and then showed me on his phone a little blue circle moving slowly over a bridge. There it is, he said. It’s 640km away.

I looked at the blinking blob and wanted to cry.

In my hotel room I sat on the edge of one of two vast beds and gazed at the city, lit up below me. Room service was on its way, and from my laptop I e-mailed various people to say I’d lost my phone.

By any standards I was safe, facing no imminent or distant risk. Yet still I felt all wrong: exposed and vulnerable. The stress over the speech I was set to give was nothing by comparison.

At the conference the next day, the delegates filed out for coffee, but there was no networking going on as everyone was in silent communion with their e-mails.

With no such comfort blanket, I had no choice but do something retro — engage a stranger in conversation, who rewarded me by being interesting and useful.

Later, out on the street and bound for South Station, I did another thing I hadn’t done since I got my first smartphone. I asked a woman for directions, and she duly provided them. Here was my next discovery: asking a person is better than Google Maps. It is faster and doesn’t require reading glasses.

On the train to New York, I did my e-mails. Because it is a kerfuffle opening the laptop and signing on, I did them in one go, after which I shut the machine and read a book.

It then occurred to me that the invention of the BlackBerry was not progress. There is nothing to be gained from having your e-mails follow you around — and much to be lost as it detracts from whatever else you are doing.

By day three, all panic had gone, replaced by an unaccustomed feeling of freedom.

Without my whole world tugging at me from my pocket, I could simply marvel at the beauty of Central Park in the early morning sun.

Back home in London there were only two occasions when a phone might have come in handy.

The first was when I’d missed the last overground home and I wanted to order an Uber, but this wasn’t too bad as soon enough, a bus came trundling along.

The second was when I was meeting someone who had tried to text to tell me she was running late.

All that happened was I was left waiting for 20 minutes, which I spent thinking about what I wanted from the meeting.

When my new phone arrived last Wednesday, I felt no pleasure at the neat white oblong box. I opened my text messages, dreading all the messages I’d missed, only to find none at all — texts don’t automatically transfer from one gadget to another.

There was only one bad thing about losing my phone. I lost face at the same time.

When one of my sons left his phone on a park bench a few months ago, I told him that if he wasn’t mature enough to look after a smartphone, he wasn’t mature enough to own one.

My loss proves something different. Evidently, I’m too mature to look after mine. And now I know I’m too mature to need it either.

By any standards I was safe, facing no imminent or distant risk. Yet still I felt all wrong: exposed and vulnerable