We Managed Without Smartphones. Apparently.

When I was younger, there was a stigma attached to businesspeople who walked around with a huge phone pressed to their ear, usually talking very loudly about stocks and shares. Back then, the first mobile phones were heavy enough to be called bricks. The phone companies even offered free calls to persuade people to buy them. As the phones got smaller and cheaper, that little idea soon disappeared.

I grew up thinking a phone was for making calls or receiving them. Maybe all my friends thought the same, because I rarely got any calls. Our house had a landline for as long as I can remember, although it was hardly a private place to speak. Over the years, phones became more sophisticated and more digital, but I can also remember using the red phone boxes that now look like antiques. Ten pence bought you a few minutes. If your parents – or whoever you were calling – could be persuaded, there was always the cheeky reverse-charge call, which made them pay at a very inflated rate.

The Wrong Bus

I remember one occasion when I got out of school early and began the one-mile walk to the bus stop. Either I walked faster than usual or my bus was late, but I saw one coming, ran for it and took my usual place at the back of the top deck.

I had been given the exact fare to get home: 20p. I was also getting on earlier in the route than usual, which meant I had a better chance of a seat. The after-school buses had a notorious driver nicknamed Loony Lennie. When the bus was packed, he would throw it around corners or slam on the brakes, making the journey feel like a rollercoaster – and not a pleasant one.

The problem with getting on farther up the route was that the stops were busier and several buses went from the same place. They all looked more or less identical. The only important difference, apart from the advertising, was the number.

My bus was the 111. The bus I had just boarded was the 281.

I realised this when the 281 reached a set of traffic lights and turned left into the unknown instead of going straight on towards home. I was around 13, wet behind the ears – whatever that actually meant – and living in a world of safety until that bus went bloody left.

A mobile phone would have been bloody handy, but this was around the age of the brick. My dad did not even have one. I spent several stops staring out of the window, hoping to recognise a landmark. I had already spent my only 20p, so riding to the end of the route and getting another bus back was not an option.

Eventually I recognised Twickenham. I had been there to watch Harlequins play rugby and it was also the scene of my greatest sporting achievement. More importantly, I knew how to get home from there.

It was a long way. About four miles.

After roughly two hours of walking, I reached a major roundabout. It was dark, I was hungry and it was past 6.30pm. That was when I remembered it might be a good idea to let my parents know I was all right.

I went into a phone box, closed the door and looked at all the cards advertising premium calls. I had no idea what those premium rates might cost. I briefly wondered whether I could reverse the charges to one of them, but chose to call my parents instead.

Dad answered and accepted the reverse-charge call.

“Where are you?” he asked. Before I could answer, he added, “Your mum is very worried!”

I noticed he had not asked whether I was all right.

“Tell me where you are and I’ll pick you up.”

I began telling him my tale of woe and explaining what a big boy I had been by getting off at Twickenham Stadium.

“Okay, I’ll meet you outside the entrance,” he interrupted.

“I’m not there, Dad.”

“Where are you then?”

“Well…”

I continued my journey story and eventually explained that I had used my clever brain to find my own way home. If he wanted to pick me up, I was just outside the estate – literally five minutes’ walk away. Cheers, Dad.

I did not expect the collection of swear words that followed. Dad was not impressed that I had reverse-charged a call when I was practically home. I had been expecting the opposite: a well done for making it so far.

Platform 1 Last Train 11pm

A mobile phone would have been handy that day. Fast-forward a few years and I did have one, although it was not yet a smartphone. The cleverest things it could do were take voicemail and let me play Snake on its tiny screen. You used the keypad to steer a snake that became longer every time it ate a dot. That was about it.

I was around 17 or 18 and meeting some friends in London. I had never travelled into London on my own before and Dad gave me exact instructions. I listened carefully because he worked for London Underground at the time and was basically a human version of a modern-day route planner.

“I’ll drop you at Hampton Station. The train will take you all the way to Waterloo. At the end of the night, you must make sure you get to Platform 1 for the last train at 11pm. Call me when you get to the station and I’ll come and get you.”

Result.

Even I could follow those instructions.

Platform 1. Last train. 11pm.

Those words rang in my ears all evening. So, almost in robot mode – admittedly a slightly drunk robot by this point – I headed back to Waterloo and found Platform 1.

There were not many people waiting. The ones who were there seemed to be pulling enormous suitcases onto the train. I ran past them and climbed aboard.

My carriage was virtually empty and the seat was incredibly comfortable which, being slightly drunk and very tired, felt wonderful.

“Right, Paul. Five stops and the next one is you.”

I drifted into a light sleep.

Stop one.

I opened an eye and noticed a few more people getting on with suitcases. I looked at my watch. 11.15pm.

This train does not go to Gatwick or Heathrow, I thought. Maybe they were coming home from holiday.

Yes. That seemed perfectly reasonable.

Concern dealt with, I closed my eyes again.

“Would you like anything from the food trolley?”

I opened my eyes. A food trolley?

I looked out into the darkness and noticed that the train was travelling at quite a few knots. The occasional lit-up house whizzed past the window. I remembered Dad telling me that some stations closed at night. That must explain it.

“Sir? Coffee? Tea? Biscuits?”

The woman was waiting for an answer. Outside the window, we had just flown past Kingston, which I knew meant we were getting close to Hampton.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

Back then I used cash for almost everything, although I did have a credit card for emergencies. The Bakewell tart on the trolley looked very inviting, but I decided it probably did not constitute an emergency.

Anyway, I would be home in about ten minutes. One minute at the speed this train was travelling, presumably, and the remaining nine in Dad’s car before climbing into my lovely warm bed. That thought was particularly comforting because it had started raining.

I walked towards the doors. I hope this train starts slowing down.

Thankfully, it did.

And then I saw Dad’s car in the station car park. Even better, I could see Dad himself standing on the platform waiting for me.

There I was, standing at the train door. There he was, waiting. And there we both remained as my train slowly crawled straight past him without stopping.

Looking back, it must have been quite comical. At the time, my heart sank. The train cleared the platform and started gathering speed again.

This was not like getting on the wrong bus. This was serious.

I ran to find the guard.

“Where is this train going?” I asked – or possibly shouted – desperately.

“Where do you want to go?”

Why not answer the fucking question instead of replying with another question?

“I want to go to Hampton. But the train just went past it. Can we stop the train and reverse it back?”

The guard laughed. Apparently, he thought I was joking.

I had watched enough Thomas the Tank Engine to know that train garages – or whatever they are actually called – had those turntable things. It all looked easy enough to me.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We may have missed that Hampton, but we’re on our way to the south of that place. Will that do?”

“What?”

And then the penny dropped.

We were on our way to fucking Southampton.

On the last train of the night.

“When is the next train back?” I asked, already suspecting I was not going to like the answer.

“6.45am,” he replied. “Got on the wrong train, did ya?”

“I was told to get the Platform 1 train to Hampton.”

Apparently, there had been some kind of signal failure or platform change. I cannot remember the precise explanation now.

What I do remember is arriving in Southampton in the early hours of the morning, in pouring rain, while all the people with the suitcases – who, it turned out, really were travelling somewhere – promptly took all the available taxis.

I found the nearest hotel and called Dad. Could he come and pick me up from Southampton? Suffice to say, after another impressive collection of swear words, the answer was no.

I would have to find a hotel. At 1am. In the pouring rain.

The only place I could find that would let me stay was the Hilton. It cost a fortune and, if I remember correctly, I had to pay for an extra day as well. Talk about taking advantage of a person in distress.

I called home again to let my parents know I was safe. Dad answered and seemed happy enough that I was staying at the Hilton. He also helpfully reminded me that in the morning I would have to buy a single ticket back to London and then get the right train from Waterloo to Hampton.

I fell asleep thinking about the long-winded journey ahead of me.

Perhaps They Are Useful After All

Those two stories are probably familiar to people around my age – those of us who remember a time before smartphones. We moan about how intrusive they have become, and with some justification. But they are also incredibly useful.

If I had owned a smartphone when I got on the wrong bus, I could have looked at a map, realised what I had done and got off much earlier. I could have called my parents immediately instead of walking four miles home. No angry dad. No reverse-charge phone call. No pocket-money penalty.

And years later, I could have checked which train I was actually getting on at Waterloo rather than blindly trusting Platform 1. There would probably have been no Southampton. No Hilton. No very expensive journey home.

So, yes, smartphones have their disadvantages.

I hate the way they draw us into a world of social-media irrelevance. Sometimes I finish watching something and think, What was that actually about, and why did I watch it until the end?

I hate the feeling that they are listening to everything we say, deciding what we might be interested in and then subtly showing it to us. Give something the slightest bit of attention and suddenly you are bombarded by people trying to sell you something that is apparently going to change your life.

They are the modern-day equivalent of snake-oil salesmen from old Westerns, or walking through a market where people shout at you to come over simply because you happened to glance at something on their stall. It is one of the reasons I hate ITV, Sky or any channel with time-wasting commercials.

But for connecting us to one another, I think the mobile phone is a godsend.

Loneliness is a terrible thing, and a phone gives us the chance to cheer up someone’s day simply by asking if they are okay. We can take someone’s mind off their problems for a few minutes or just be there as a sounding board.

I know we do not always use them that way. But the option is there.

And then there is safety. I wonder how many lives have been saved because somebody had a phone with them, or how much evidence used in criminal cases has come from a smartphone.

But perhaps the biggest thing for me is simply the feeling that someone has got your back.

There have been so many times in my life since smartphones arrived when a friend or lover has wished me luck before something important, left a timely voicemail that cheered me up, or been there when I wanted to share good news – or bad.

For all the things about mobile phones that drive me mad, I think that is the bit we sometimes forget.

Someone is not very far away.