SUSAN CALMAN Our columnist takes a trip down memory lane

They may have been the size of bricks with absolutely dreadful sound quality, but our columnist feels strangely sentimental about her old mobiles

During one of my recent regular cleaning-out frenzies, I decided to tackle the elephant in the room. Well, more precisely the coffee table. Except it’s not really a coffee table per se; it’s a large chest with seemingly endless drawers and storage compartments. This chest has been with us for 20 years, slowly filling up with ‘stuff’, moving from house to house and always on the list of ‘I’ll sort that out later’. So, with time on my hands during lockdown, I took a deep breath and went in.

The first drawer contained a strange mix of Blu Tack, pipe cleaners and glitter, from when I decided to make sparkly spiders as decorations for Halloween in 2011. Sadly, they ended up looking like something Sir David Attenborough would find in a dank cave and run away from. Then, after that slightly mundane beginning, the clear-out took a more interesting turn. This chest, sitting in plain view for years, rather than being just a place for eating TV dinners or for cats to dance on, actually contained some of the greatest archaeological finds since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb (nearly). It turns out that I had casually deposited every piece of technology I’d ever owned in these drawers.

The first thing I discovered was the tomb of the phones, an extraordinary time capsule of my life from the mid-1990s onwards. Sadly, I was never lucky enough to have one of the very first mobile phones, but you’ll remember them: they were the size of bricks with batteries that lasted about an hour and sound quality that was nearly as good as tying two yogurt pots together with a piece of string.

My first mobile phone was bought in 1996 with the specific purpose of telling my mum that I’d passed my degree. In many ways, it was a surprise that I even managed to call with the good news of my university triumph, as you had to extend an antenna that was almost as tall as me and stand at just the right part of the high point of a hill to get a signal.

As I dug deeper into the treasure trove, I found each and every phone I’d ever had. There was the first one I could send a text from and the first one that had a camera. I even had a little Nokia that I bought because it appeared in the film Charlie’s Angels, and I truly believed that it would make me look exactly like Drew Barrymore if I used it. It didn’t.

I also found my first ever ipod. I didn’t really know how to use it at the time and it was controlled by a touch screen wheel thing that, given my tiny fingers, never quite worked. Using two hands, I would furiously scroll through the one album I could afford (Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours), holding it aloft in the hope someone would notice I was cool.

Then, just like Howard Carter in the Valley Of The Kings (I’m not letting this analogy go), I saw the faint glinting of metal. It was my Palmpilot – the most impressive of all the tech I had. It came with a stylus so that you could tap on the screen and show just how important you were. I remember getting mine when I qualified as a lawyer and I knew it would make me look just like TV’S Ally Mcbeal. I wanted to show everyone that I meant business and this was the way to do it.

It was a glorious trip back in time, remembering when each and every one of these new gadgets was like the opening to a new world. I looked at my collection of microchips and memories, these little pieces of history, and slowly put them back into the coffee table. Maybe I’ll rediscover them in another 20 years and be just as excited and, no doubt, they’ll feature on the Antiques Roadshow of the future.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I still want to be Drew Barrymore. Or

Ally Mcbeal. Either or both – I’m not fussy.

I had to stand at the high point of a hill to get a signal