Name Dropping

Technology and I aren’t exactly bosom buddies, but I appreciate that these days we can’t go far without it.
From cars to microwaves, air and space travel to smart phones, it is there, a part of our daily life.
Until it’s not.

Let’s just say we’ve had a couple of little accidents with my Nokia mobile. Note I say ‘We’.
It took a while for Hubby and I to accept a mobile phone into our life, and that was only because it was a gift from Father in law.
Shortly thereafter, we decided to get a second phone, simple PAYG non contract items where we were in control of costs and usage.
These lasted us well, but eventually failed, and so had to be replaced.
We each purchased the same Nokia model and were very pleased with them. We bought SIM cards from the supermarket and the mobile numbers were consecutive which made them easy to remember!
OK, it took over two years to realise that our phones also received and sent TEXT messages, and that was purely by chance when a company was trying to contact us and we had a message on our screen to tell us we had a text message!

Sadly, Hubby’s Nokia got washed in the machine, and survived the first dunking, but not the final rinse on the second. His replacement didn’t like doing the breast stroke in the river either, but mine was still going strong, and it was this one I took to NZ in 2010. I had no problem whatsoever in making calls or sending messages either to the UK or NZ itself on my existing SIM. If I needed credit, I sent a text message to Hubby in the UK and he would do it for me.

We managed for years, putting up with the little jibes from techno-savvy relatives when we said our phones didn’t take or receive photographs or had internet connection. We wanted a phone, not a portable computer room.
Hubby has had 7 mobiles, three since we’ve been here. These days, it’s not as simple as it was to just go in a shop and pick a cheap PAYG, buy a separate SIM card and replace the chip, or take the existing chip out of your old phone to put in the new. Oh No.
Although you can still buy PAYG phones, now you get a ‘tied in package’ with your computer or TV, and the same phone model on a different network varies in price by several pounds.

I love my Nokia. Like me, it is old and tired, but it does what I want it to, and I’m happy.
I know how to use it, how to set the alarm, how to look up my contacts, send messages or play with the volume of various ring tones. I even know how to answer it too!
Sadly, my screen now has a crack in it. Hubby has kindly fixed this with superglue, so I have a unique spider’s web over it, but can still read the display.
How it happened? A torch fell on it from the hook above the cupboard it was sitting on.

Yesterday, Hubby passed it to me to set the alarm as he needed to be up early this morning and I dropped it.
OK, it landed on the carpet in the boat rather than the tarmac in the car park, but all the lights went out. They came back on seconds later, but I couldn’t punch in any details, back track, or switch it off. Hubby took out the battery, waited a bit and then put it back in.
It worked.

BUT
Like millions of others, I realised I have become reliant on technology.
In my case, the technology of my contact list and numbers being in my phone which I don’t have anywhere else.

That has now been rectified and I have reverted back to an ‘old fashioned’ one of these.