My old Nokia and thoughts on what we have lost

It was so long ago that I can’t even remember which Nokia model this was, but it was my first mobile phone.

I don’t count the brick I briefly rented around 1994, it was very heavy not easy to use and really at the time there were few people I wanted to contact using it.

And in the two decades since I haven’t moved much further.  I briefly tried a smart phone but discovered I wasn’t smart enough to use it and went back to the company to ask for a down grade, to a phone which just allows you to call people, send texts and play snake with a battery which doesn’t run out by lunch time and which if you drop it just bounces on the floor.

So not for me the magic of sending emails receiving the latest news and buying online I will stick with a machine that is as antiquated as the wireless and the telegram.

Both of which are now history, pretty much along with the picture postcard and the telephone box.

Once the picture postcard reigned supreme.

A card sent in the morning could be expected to arrive in the afternoon allowing you to alert the family that you would be home from holiday later that day or just arrange to meet for tea.

Now if you can find a picture postcard it will cost an arm and leg to send it and it may take an age to arrive.

In much the same way I doubt that it is as easy to find a telephone kiosk.

Back in the early days of competition with Mercury BT were putting them up all over the place, and now they are disappearing in the same way as they arrived.

Of course there are still plenty around but like the 218 from town they no longer appear in bunches.

Time I think to go recording them.

Pictures; a cherished first Nokia from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and a telephone kiosk in Henry Square, t01643, circa 1990, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/history/archive.php3