Tuesday 3 Nov 2009

Can you believe it eh?  All the pictures I took of Keith's birthday:  the cake, family lunch, tea party - the whole lot - gone!  They were all there on the memory card in the camera when we went to Blackpool but taking shots of the tower ballroom with its intricate decoration used up more memory than I knew.  It seems to have wiped other things to make more space - THEN sent me a 'no memory left' message.   Bother bother BOTHER, say I!  Sounds like a job for the brand new super-duper 8-gig memory stick.It'll have to go grazing off everyone's computers!  It's not the same though, is it?

Telephones.  Most of us have our very own personal carry-out ones these days as well as our home phone.  What they all have in common is push buttons.  I was just thinking this afternoon how I used to like the sound of the old-fashioned dial;  a simple pleasure denied us nowadays.  For some reason I could always remember people's phone numbers when we dialled them on a dial as opposed to a keypad.  I'm hopeless now - probably old age galloping up!  Now  I can't even remember a number for the length of time it takes me to look up the number and pick up the phone!  I did like proper dials though.  I didn't even mind ruining my nails in the holes.

There was something about a proper telephone ringing noise too.  Made from a proper bell, it was.  I know this because I once took one apart to see if I could alter the sound because the 2 phones on my office desk sounded identical.  A small bit of sticky tape stuck on the bell altered the sound just enough so I put it together again - and realised they were the same colour!  So I ended up with a r-r-resonant, r-r-rich r-r-ring-r-r-ring on one and a dull muted thud and a blob of Tippex on the other.  No needto mess about like that now.  You can choose your own ring, and what an eyeopener some are, to be sure!  My niece has an incredibly rude one which, basically amounts to an irate bloke urging you to "Pick up the *** phone.  Answer the phone...why dontcha,  Pick the *** thing up".  It gets louder and more insistent the longer you leave it.  Great in the supermarket checkout!

Let's take a step further back:  who can remember those old Bakelite telephonrs?  The first office I ever worked in had them.  Goodness knows how old it was even then, when plastic ones were the norm.  They smelled horrible and the handset weighed a ton but their dial made a beautiful sound and there was always a tiny little 'ching' when you hung up, which made slamming the phone down extremely satisfying and the person on the other end knew the phone had been slammed.  Not so now.  There's no sound when you press the disconnect button now and he who caused the displeasure rings you back and says"I think we got cut off..........".  Round 2 - ring-ring!