A week without my smartphone.

It’s been over a week without a phone. I’m coping. I’m not sure if others are.

1) No ‘Where Are You’ messages.

People don’t know where I am! Maybe I’ll arrive at the station on time. Maybe not. They have no way of knowing and I have no way of putting them out of their misery. Put it this way: I’m adding drama to their lives.

2) No Podcasts.

Hurrah! I’m a citizen of Ireland again, listening to Morning Ireland, George Hook and Arena. Instead of interesting shows from the UK and the US, it’s back to living in the goldfish bowl that is Irish media. Boy, will I have a backlog to get through when I finally get a new phone.

3) The constant need to update my status on Twitter all the goddamn time has greatly diminished.

So many pithy thoughts lost to posterity. You’re so upset, I can tell.

4) Photographs, of which I have none.

A whole haystack went on fire yesterday morning right beside the house. A transformer exploded near the house a few days earlier. Both incidences were as dramatic as you get in this part of the world. We even had fire engines. And what evidence do I have of these momentous occurrences? Nothing. I’ll show you a picture of the scorchings instead over the coming days. It’ll be almost like witnessing the real thing. Almost.

5) Remembering things is fun.

It’s amazing the extent to which I have left the phone organise my life. Without it, every deadline is a bit of a guess. I’m now reliant on people looking angrily at me. I so wish there was a button I could press to stop people looking like that. A Happy Face Button – there you go now. Who wants to invent that for me?

6) Back to using Voicemail.

Did I tell you I hated voicemail? Back in the halcyon smartphone days, I could safely avoid it for weeks on end. Now, it is one of the only ways I can be contacted. “Press 3, then 5, then 1 to continue. At the tone, enter your passcode then press hash. Sorry, please enter that 10 digit code again. Sorry, invalid response. Please try again later”. The designers of voicemail are as close to pure, unrestrained evil as you will find in the world today.

Life should return to relative normality next week. If not, please don’t try to find me and above all, please, please, don’t leave me a voicemail.