THE OLD-FASHIONED ART

The other night (after one of my famous inability-to-socialise events) I sat on Platform 9, waiting for the train. There was a space on a bench free, with just an acceptable distance between the two girls perched at either end, so I made a line for it, and sat down.

I instantly reached for my pocket. It was like a reflex action.

But halfway there, my fingers stopped over my jeans, and I thought about it. I looked left. The girl that side (ripped jeans, large suitcase) was engrossed in her phone. She was scrolling through something that looked like it would never end. I looked right: headphones in, white phone, and more scrolling.

What did we use to do?

I left my phone in my jeans and looked around. I counted the windows in an office block that poked above the roof of Platform 12 opposite. It had five rows of 16 large windows. It amused me again that I always underestimate larger numbers of things like that. It didn’t look like 80 windows, but there they were - some dark, some with late-night plasma lamps flickering, some blinded over.

Beneath that twilight sky and those offices, Platform 12 had one or two people waiting on it for the train to Worcester. I watched. Every single one of them was fixated on their smartphone. I folded my arms and smiled, weirdly. It occurred to me that I would have been the one to look strange.

-

It happened again today. I was early to a meeting in which all the other earlybirds were passing the time by angling their heads towards their phones and scrolling through them. I felt the temptation to do the same.

I think I’ve decided to resist that temptation. Sure, I don’t have the call of ficklebook on my phone, begging to be checked all the time. I deliberately don’t use Twitter on my phone either, but I do have instagram, and the quest for news, views, and likes is of course, just as strong there too. In fact, the quest for distraction of any kind, is a powerful pull.

-

“Enjoying this hot weather?” asked a friendly gentleman in the queue at Waitrose. I smiled, and then, not sure how to phrase a response to a live human-being, I said:

“Well it has been rather sweltering,” in a voice that made me sound like a Victorian dandy. For some reason he laughed, and then we moved along the queue. In so many queues, I would be quite happily checking my emails or thinking up witty zingers for WhatsApp groups.

Later, in the park, I was wandering around in my Panama Motorcycle Rally t-shirt. Famously, Panama had just been knocked out of the World Cup by England who had thrashed them 6-1.

“Safe to wear that now, I guess!” joked a dog-walker as he passed me by. It was a nice moment, but I had nothing to say back. I supposed it was, and I laughed as I made my way home.

If I’m going to be less phone-dependant in the 54% of my life I spend alone, then I suppose I’m going to have to get much better at the old-fashioned art of conversation.