Out Of Contact…

My mobile phone (smart phone) finally gave up the ghost this weekend. The battery refused to charge. First there was anger, but that was eventually followed by resignation.

We had shared five years, difficult years, together. 

The young man in the phone shop, EE, was at first sympathetic. He placed upon himself some professional concern when I told him that the phone had gone and that I was out-of-contract. Those last three magical words, which make up the phrase that makes the ears and attention of sales people lift up, are powerful. They are signifiers of of the twenty-first century’s in-built obsolescence approach to the business of living. Like me, my phone was out-of-date and not worth the contract it had once been written on.

“It’s an iPhone 5,” the smug little bastard told me. “There is nothing you can do.”

I once listened to an indifferent doctor make a…