How we survived before the Smartphone ...

Meeting someone who admits to not owning a smartphone is nowadays almost as rare as discovering rocking horse dung in one’s back garden.

A whopping 93 per cent of the adult population of this country own a mobile and I dare say many of those would admit to not being able to live without one. I count myself to be among that shameful army of 21st Century losers.

At the risk of sounding like my 94-year-old grandfather, a proud member of the seven per cent of Brits who would not know whether to answer an Apple or turn it into chutney, what did we do before mobiles and smartphones?

Back in the late 1980s when Michael Barrymore was still famous mobiles were considered as daft as wearing shoes without socks or sticking ice in your cider. Back then if we wanted to meet someone we rang them to arrange a time and a place.

We did not have the luxury of texting to discover whether more milk and bread was needed, we would have used our judgement or, heaven forbid, put our coat back on and go back out if we made the wrong call. The point is we survived and looking back it was by no means the Dark Ages.

So why do I, and millions of others, develop a cold sweat when we can’t immediately lay our hands on these precious devices?

My argument is it provides me with the most up-to-date news and having a wireless device in my pocket makes me feel like I am connected to the rest of the world. I feel like I am ‘on the grid’.

Yes I do occasionally sneak a furtive glance at my Samsung whilst being addressed on the important news of the day by Mrs Tapp or, to my eternal shame, our five-year-old but I am the product of an era.

To moan about the mobile phone use of others is akin to complaining about how loud a family member breathes. It is a sad fact of modern day life so we all had better get used to it.