WALDEN’S WORLD

Charging a phone in minutes? Carnage…

My 10-year-old is so finely attuned to my biggest pet peeve that she’ll sometimes turn to me in the street and whisper: “S.A.!”

Spatial awareness – or rather a glaring lack of it – hasn’t always been a problem. Yet nowadays it is everywhere.

People will suddenly stop in the middle of the pavement, oblivious to the multiple pile-up behind.

They will blithely block shop entrances, alleyways and bus doorways: any kind of space that other humans might need in order to pass through.

And those who grind to an abrupt halt as they reach the other side of a zebra crossing deserve a special mention – just for leaving those behind at the mercy of that careering white van man.

Why are all these people so completely unconcerned with the lives and needs of others? Because they’re all on their phones.

Because what better place to watch a Youtube video of a squirrel eating an M&S sandwich than the entrance to the Post Office? And because the perfect time to tap out a reply to that email is surely as you disembark a heaving Tube train.

Anyone who hasn’t yet been confronted by this social ill is about to, thanks to dead phone batteries soon becoming a thing of the past.

Dead phones were our sole reprieve from iphone-itis. On Sunday, however, it was revealed that new technology – showcased at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week – will mean that by the summer, it will be possible to fully charge a phone in just nine minutes.

Apparently, tech companies have been trying to achieve this for years, only the handsets kept overheating.

Now, the only thing liable to burst into flames will be me, as the Barclays bank teller calls out to the guy scrolling through Instagram in front of me for the third time: “Next customer, please!”