BRING back the tablets of stone or a quill pen. Sometimes I yearn for the days when communicating with each other was so much simpler.

We wrote letters or sent telegrams. We read newspapers that weren't celebrity scandal sheets. We talked to each other face to face.

But now we’re Tweeting this and Facebooking that, and our dependency on mobile phones is in danger of making some of us as desperate for our next phone call or text as a junkie for his next fix.

Me included. Or it certainly felt like it when I dropped my phone down the loo. (Don't ask).

OMG![1] In a split second my life went down the pan. Literally. On that phone were all my business contacts and as I was due to be out on the road over the next few days it was imperative I had the equivalent of a mobile Rolodex with me. Consequently I felt like my right arm had been cut off and I most certainly was not ROFL[2].

This was a seriously sad state of affairs in more ways than one. In the blink of an eye I’d joined the hordes of cellphone junkies who think their lives are meaningless without the ability to exercise their thumb joints or frying their brains by remaining attached to their electro-magnetic umbilical cord.

But then – deep joy. For IIRC[3] I was due an upgrade. Which basically means you can get a brand new handset from your provider and you’re so thrilled to have the latest version to play with that you don’t bother too much that in among their indulgent largesse they’ve whacked up your tariff.

Given that as a small business we have three phones on a business account, then it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get sorted. Now would it? Well how naïve can you be…

Ten miles later I’m sitting in the phone shop in the centre of York thinking my life would soon be back on track. I would get a new phone, my precious business information would be intact and I could head out on the open road for three days knowing I'd got my hands-free mobile office with me as I drove.

The unnerving callow youth (un-nerving because his robotic knowledge about all things mobile phones makes you feel totally inadequate, not to mention bamboozled by what was on offer) came up for air from his keyboard. “None in stock,” he said. “Dunno[4] when they’re gunna[5] come in.”

He thought a bit. “You could always go to Arrergut[6]. They’ve got some.”

Well whoopee-do. Now I like Harrogate. I really do. But the thought of driving over there to get a mobile phone because the York store didn’t have one is not what makes me think fondly of the place. I mean, it wasn’t as if I could get the phone in Betty’s, was it?

But of course, I’d turned into a cell phone junkie, so turn the wheel down the A59 I did. Bad move. More callow youths. Can’t let you have one, they said. You didn’t take out your business contract with this store…. O RLY!!![7] 

Cue demented dancing up and down and lots of OMGs… Someone, somewhere in the monolithic organisation that was the phone provider was talking complete rubbish, but would the store budge? No, it would not.

Anyway, in the way of text-speak, TCALSS[8] many angst-ridden phone calls to their head office later and – wait for it – a return trip to Harrogate, I got back to being in the land of the living and a total of 160 miles and eight quid in parking fees later, wearily bore the new mobile phone home.

Except guess what? They’d activated the sim card to the wrong phone number. FCOL! I’ll leave you to work out that one….

[1] OMG – Text-speak exclamation. Shouldn’t be too hard to work that one out. Think heavenwards.

[2] ROFL – Rolling on the floor laughing. I’d hardly do that at the best of times. I’m too old for that sort of behaviour.

[3] IIRC – If I recall correctly. Somewhat pompous speak for I’ve just remembered….

[4] Dunno – Don’t know. The use of which is guaranteed to infuriate English teachers everywhere.

[5] Gunna – Going to. See previous footnote.

[6] Arrergut. Or Hah-row-gate if you’re posh.

[7] O RLY – Oh really, as in sarcasm, doubt and dismay. Mine, of course, was the latter.

[8] TCALSS – To cut a long story short. This is in a bid to stop you being bored.