Western Morning News (Saturday)
Memories from the golden age of telephones
MITCHAM 7676. A number I gravely memorised as a small child. It was our telephone number. The arrival of this big black Bakelite beast caused some excitement. Once installed, it sat on the windowsill in the hall – no comfy chair around as the thought of chatting for hours had yet to be part of our lifestyle.
I can still remember the panic when the phone rang for the first time, its jangling tone echoing through the house. Everyone ran to answer it, then stopped, staring at it before picking it up as if it were a live hand grenade. My mother didn’t need a phone, cocoa tins and string would have been fine. She bellowed so loudly that people in the next road could have heard. Conversations were stilted and short – phone bills had yet to be assessed.
I also remember being fascinated by the little black Perspex address sheet that pulled out from underneath, and getting told off because I’d scribbled on it in crayon. My Dad replaced the paper and neatly wrote out several numbers. It could have taken about ten, I’m guessing. Little did anyone dream of having a phone that would hold hundreds of numbers.
Occasionally, MIT 7676 would ring and I would dare to pick it up, listening breathlessly for a voice to appear out of the ether. Hubs remembers always having to ask the operator to place a call. I don’t, but in those days there was the delicious chance of getting a crossed line. I would eavesdrop guiltily on a conversation between people who I would never meet, before hanging up with a clunk, often intrigued by the conversation I’d listened to.
Phones then, as now, aren’t always private. Newspapers have bugged personalities for sleazy stories. Recently, another Tory-bashing announcement was made that Boris Johnson’s mobile number had been found on a website in the public domain. Silly Billy, or maybe silly Boris. I doubt he’s unduly worried as he’s probably got a dozen phones and the one all the fuss is about is likely to be sitting, uncharged, in a drawer somewhere.
Like most of my journalistic pals, I’ve gathered a black book of famous names over the years, but I would never, ever take advantage of them or pass them on. Nope, those numbers have been earned through trust.
Now, it seems, landline phones are on the wane. 40% of us have stopped having fixed phones, though 95% of those over 65 still have them. Most under-25s don’t have one at all, but nowadays it’s hard to meet anyone who doesn’t have a mobile.
From the staccato, essential calls of my childhood, now everyone talks on them incessantly 24/7. They ring in quiet train carriages, doctor’s surgeries, are used at the table, in the theatre.
Phones have become unnecessarily intrusive. Scammers take every opportunity to try and sell you insurance, tell you have a parcel that needs paying for, or that your internet needs fixing. When our landline phone goes, Hubs looks at me and says: “Who is it?”. As the device doesn’t come with a crystal ball, I’m usually unable to answer him. He can quite happily let it ring if he’s absorbed in something else, while I’ll run through the house like Usain Bolt, grasping the receiver as I sink to my knees, wheezing “allo” just in time to hear the caller hang up.
More and more phone boxes are being turned into defibrillator units, book swaps or other community uses. I can’t remember the last time I used a phone in a box, but I do remember using them as a teenager, stuffing money in and pressing button A, or was it B? And getting sharp elbows in an effort to get to a phone box ahead of other reporters so I could read a hot story over to the copytaker in the newsroom. Or trudging through the rain looking for a phone box, only to find it was out of order or someone had stuck the wrong coin in the hole and jammed it up.
I spent a year driving across America with a girlfriend in an old camper van. On my birthday, we camped on the side of the Grand Canyon. The only sign of life, incongruously, was a pay phone. It only took quarters, and I had $27 of them weighing my pocket down as I went, somewhat homesick, to ring home after several months. When my mother answered, I stuffed the money in, only to hear her say: “I’m looking for my purse to pay the milkman – talk to him while I find it”. So I’m making small talk to a total stranger, and as my mother came back on the line, the pips went and the line died.
Alexander Graham Bell created the phone and made the first call in 1876. I doubt he’d be too bothered at the prospect of landlines being taken out of commission. He might have invented the phone, but he refused to have one in his own home, saying he’d invented it by mistake and saw it as a distraction from his main studies. Hubs would entirely agree.
I can still remember the panic when the phone rang for the first time, its jangling tone echoing through the house