mostly david ephgrave

I feel like most of my evening has been wasted, through trying to set up my new mobile phone. Such is the way with modern technology. While it’s always exciting to be armed with a new bit of kit, far too much time can be spent initially, in making it work. All those fail-safe ways to quickly transfer data or install a backup never seem to work in practise, or maybe it’s just me. It doesn’t help that every moment devoted to setting up my new handset should really have been given over to something else, such as compiling material for next week’s Bath Comedy Festival work-in-progress dates. I purposely upgraded my phone before I went to Bath, so I could make the most of its facilities for recording my sets and putting together the show. I’m still pleased I did this, I just wish I hadn’t taken so long to do things today, as it feels like another day was lost that could have been used for more important things. Other than wrestling with my new B...

There’s a woman who lives near me who I can honestly say I’ve never once seen not on the phone. (Brief hiatus for you to work past the ‘never’ and ‘not’ to understand the gist of this sentence.) This isn’t an exaggeration. She’s on it every time she walks past (and I’m going to apply the oft-misused word ‘literally’). I see her every day, usually more than once. I don’t want you to think I’m spying on her - I am , I just don’t want you to think it – but it’s very hard not to notice her telephonic proclivities, particularly as most of her conversations take place right outside my window, any time of the day or night. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was addicted to speaking to people she can’t see; if there’s such a fetish, it’s sick . I’m not the only person to notice it. My wife has spotted it too. It happens so often, it’s comedic. She may as well have a handset skin-grafted to her palm. She usually adopts that annoying hands-free technique favoured by teenagers ...

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...