It's the End of an Era

The years - seventeen of them - have developed an affectionate bond between me and my little Nokia phone. Well, a one-sided one, but you know what I mean. It has survived innumerable falls, and on one occasion being dropped in a glass of water. The time it was discovered in a gutter on a rainy Spring Fair day with water sloshing behind its screen and had to be dried out in the airing cupboard is one of my favourite stories. 'I'm waiting until it breaks, then I'll change it,' I told Cal at a church meeting. 'That'll never break', he countered, 'the Earth will run out of fossil fuels to charge it before it breaks.'

But, reluctantly, its time has come. The other Sunday before heading off to Dorset I tried to call my mother and, having discovered I had too little credit on the phone, attempted to top up. Virgin wouldn't let me: the automated voice told me I either had to sign up for a new tariff there and then, or speak to an adviser. Twenty minutes later, I was on that new tariff which the adviser assured me would be far better value, and a new SIM card would be on its way. Would it work with my old Nokia phone, I asked? Yes, was the reassuring answer. 

Of course it didn't. It took eleven days, numerous long phone calls to Virgin and another SIM being sent out to replace the first for them to admit that, no, the new card wasn't compatible with my old phone, despite me discussing the model number with several people. At one point I was given a phone number for Nokia Technical Support which turned out to be inactive. I realised that the young people I was talking to (I imagine they are young) actually had very little idea how the kit in question worked, and were just reading instructions from a screen. Their incomprehension was more pitiful than it was annoying. I was finally passed to the Customer Services Department and apologetically offered a new contract. I accepted it before my sister pointed out how much more expensive it was than hers with Tesco, and so today I have sorted out something with them instead. I am not done with Virgin yet, though: although I have 14 days to cancel my contract, this can't happen until they receive back the new handset they've sent me, returned in the bespoke packaging which may take five days to arrive here, let alone the time it will take getting back to them. That eats significantly into those 14 days. Only then will Virgin release my number so it can be passed to my new, new phone. Even the phone call in which I asked to cancel my contract was painful. Although the paperwork says you can withdraw without a reason, I was still asked for one, and in fact badgered for one as though what I'd done was a personal slight to the Virgin employee I was talking to. I think she had a box to tick.

I always managed without carrying internet access around with me, and have a separate camera and an old iPod. When I go to London I take an A-Z, and elsewhere I work out where I'm going before I set out. I don't need one device to do everything, or have every option with me all the time. I can wait until I get home to check emails. The potential to do anything you might want, all the time - that seductive offer of choice - in fact means the abolition of choice. If there are no constraints on what you can do, you never choose. I like the constraints. I choose them. My handsome, shiny new phone feels like a defeat, strangely, and not just because it's bigger and clearly more vulnerable than my old one and I worry how soon I will manage to break it.

I could have got another pay-as-you-go Nokia, though not from Virgin; but it's become clear that that would have been considerably more expensive than a contract - more, I think, than its smaller size and comforting archaicism would justify. And besides, I only had my old one because it kept going and I have a prejudice against throwing things away until they do break. I always knew I would have to give it up one day; but I do feel a bit like a resistance member who the secret police have finally caught up with.