PAUL V'S PHONES

Woodsy's memories and the comments by Tony and Kevin awakened a few memories of my own (thanks for that!).

Earliest memories of a phone are from when I was six. I can still remember our phone number from then, which I actually use as a password for certain things (as did my late Mum, I once happened to notice :)

I can recall also using the trick of clicking the button the receiver rested on, which was also reputed to make the exchange think you'd interrupted the call so you'd be calling for free :) though I've never known if that was actually the case (perhaps Tony would know that?). Prank calls were also a favourite pastime.

My dad being a collector of 78rpm Blues records (pretty well-known in his time) meant that we'd also get calls late in the evening, with an American voice asking for "Mex Vree-dee" (not how you pronounce it :) so some of the first words in my English vocabulary were "I will get him for you."

Trimphones I came across as a student in London's East End in the early Eighties, in fact there was a classmate who could do a perfect imitation of the "ffrrrrp-ffrrrrp" sound it made to the confusion of whoever picked up the real one in the studio.

I fondly remember using British pay phone boxes quite a lot in those days as well, which also had a distinct smell which I can't really describe. A real shame most of those red street icons were taken away. (Once had the idea of buying one and converting it into a shower stall, but on second thoughts it would probably be too small... not to mention getting the thing into the bathroom!)

I too have a couple of old phones knocking around. The oldest is a simple wooden box with a funnel on top to speak into, separate earpiece on a lead (currently missing), and a push-button on the side to call the exchange with, no dial.

This may have been an in-house phone to call to the kitchen perhaps, but for all I know it could've been used in a very early public network. In my first flat in Brussels (where we also survived without a phone) I had it hanging on the wall in the kitchen; anybody wanting to use our phone would be told about its existence before being directed to the bar across the road which had a payphone!

Next oldest is a British bakelite set very similar to what Tony is showing (little drawer underneath and all). I had hopes of still using it, but the Brussels exchanges going digital prevented that.

Much more recent is a Swatch cordless phone, an excellent rap-rod which has sadly given up the ghost but which I intend to try and get fixed. The benefit of the bright orange colour was that it made it much more findable every time Mrs V left it lying around somewhere!

To round off I include my old iPhone, the first and only mobile I've ever had. Although I'll readily admit that mobile phones are very useful, I'm not that fond of what they lead to. F ex certain people blithely bothering you whenever it suits them (or being annoyed that they couldn't when you don't answer), people in cars using them, or the interruptions during social occasions where apparently the call or text message is more important than the live person one is talking with. 

Plus mobile phones had nasty little buttons in a generally most unattractive package, before the iPhone came along with its clean interface in a clean housing design. A friend brought one over from Florida (before they were available over here) and gave me first right of refusal, a colleague could jailbreak it and that did it for me. 

So it's the original first model, still running a by now obsolete system, but still doing sterling service. To protect it I've added padding to a 1942 US Army first aid kit pouch; the notice on the start screen is a sign from a WW2 destroyer at Chatham Dockyard which somehow looked appropriate. :)

Paul Vreede