mostly david ephgrave

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s probably best to never phone me. I have a gut-wrenching aversion to making or receiving telephone calls. I’m awful at it – and have been known to audibly groan when my telephone rings and I know I have to answer it. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m some sort of recluse. It’s also never meant as a personal affront to whoever may be trying to reach me. I just hate the ‘forced-into-a-corner, you-must-have-a-conversation-right-now’ feeling that can only come with the sound of an unanswered telephone. Stephen Fry summarises it better than I ever could, which is probably unsurprising. He says: “The telephone is a fantastically rude thing. It’s like going ‘SPEAK TO ME NOW, SPEAK TO ME NOW, SPEAK TO ME NOW’; if you went into someone’s office and banged on their desk, saying ‘I WILL MAKE A NOISE UNTIL YOU SPEAK TO ME’, it would be unbelievably rude.” For me it’s not so much a...