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Footloose and phone free

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I’ve never been a big fan of mobile phones. I really don’t like the idea of being contacted wherever I go, and much prefer the good ol’ fashioned way of people calling me during office hours on my work line. So it probably didn’t surprise too many of my friends when I decided to ditch my mobile once and for all. In fact, to be completely honest, I never really answered it all that often anyway.

For a month now I’ve been going solo. It started with the whole ‘forget to recharge it’ and ended with the ‘I’m never charging it again!’ With no home phone and no mobile, I’m as free as the wind. No annoying calls during a meeting, no long-winded voicemail messages from my family, no texts asking me to call people back. I’m loving it!

There are some really good aspects to not having a mobile and being uncontactable (the things that I always brag about to anyone who’ll listen.) When people want to get hold of my out of office hours, they’ll call the person I’m most likely with (i.e., my man, sister, best friend etc). So suddenly it’s like I’m walking around with a constant PA to screen my calls.

You have to get used to the looks of pure astonishment though. Like my tax agent, who just keep staring at me while I explained that I didn’t have a mobile or home phone. Or the gym instructor who wasn’t sure if the insurance forms would be ok without a contact number.

There are a few drawbacks that I have to confess to as well. The biggest one is that I don’t know any of my friends’ phone numbers. Although I used to have an amazing memory and could recite everybody’s phone numbers backwards, I’ve gotten into the habit of just scrolling through the menu. All this means one thing, I just don’t call people anymore!

Then there’s one final tiny problem. I really want an iPhone. Am I completely nuts to be bragging to friends that I can live without a mobile, yet desperately want an iPhone at the same time? So tell me, could you live without a mobile? Or are you so accustomed to having one that you would crumble at the knees without a phone? Or maybe there’s another piece of technology that you just have to have?