ONE of the strangest sights I've ever seen was a fully made-up clown on six-foot stilts interrupting his street act to answer his mobile phone.

There he was, 12 feet up, hopping from peg to peg with his bell-bottoms flapping in the breeze, chattering into the miserable machine.

I had no idea whether he was pleased with the call or not. His large, painted mouth retained its huge downward curve.

That's the trouble with instant, personal communications. They are instant and personal, 24 hours a day whether you are in a board meeting or the toilet.

OK, so I'm not a true member of the mobile phone generation. Mine has the dimensions of a house brick, but I resent it and what its clever, ever-more-miniature clones are doing to us all.

You can see cyclists pedalling along, chatting away happily. At least there's a phone handy to text for an ambulance when they finish up under a 40-tonne truck. That's if the truck stops because the driver is too busy phoning Sally Traffic to report road delays to the Radio Two travel news.

How often do you walk down the street and spot someone heading towards you in animated conversation with himself? Is it a loony or a cider-head; should you cross the road to avoid this demented soul? Then as he or she gets closer, oblivious to all around, you spot the tiny, telltale earpiece and microphone of the dreaded hands-free kit.

I noticed last week that East Yorkshire police are going to crack down hard on drivers who phone as they drive. Personally, I marvel at these people's dexterity. They pull away from traffic lights, mobile held fast to their burning ear, without a pause in the conversation. But how do they manage to change gear and make a sharp right-hand turn without both hands?

Over the years, drivers have managed a million ways of distracting themselves at the wheel - leering at the micro-mini skirt waddling along the pavement, sipping at a scalding paper-cupped coffee, shaving away with an electric razor and, according to the papers, one woman was recently spotted driving along the motorway eating a steak dinner from her lap. Crazy. But the era of the motoring phone-drone is surely the most serious because everybody's at it.

It's no better on the trains or buses. You just get nicely settled into your seat, ask the lad next to you to turn down his Walkman, then the phones go off all around the carriage. Ring tones ranging from the 1812 Overture and La Cuccuracha to a fire engine answering a 999 call blast out like a 48-piece orchestra in which every musician is playing to a different music sheet.

Each conversation - at high volume - begins "I'm on the train." Then they proceed to entertain us with a long report on the price of toilet rolls in Sri Lanka.

I worry most about the youngsters. They yell in physical agony if they cannot have the latest phone costing £300. Last month's model is old hat, even though by now these machines are small enough to swallow three times a day with a glass of water.

At least now we don't have to play I-Spy on long car journeys and every five minutes answer the question: "Are we there yet?"

No such luck. Car journeys, and tea time, and bedtime are all filled with the frantic, staccato rattle of text messaging. They only use their thumbs, mind, but this previously unused digit blurs across the keypad like a hummingbird's wings.

All across the world, children are growing up with callused thumbs and without the ability to speak or spell, other than in text shorthand.

Offices will soon have to replace computer QWERTY keyboards with phone keypads so that the two-thumb typists can function in the commercial world.

Office technicians over the age of seven will have to be retired because it's the three year olds who have the ability to programme the wretched things. I have to get my daughter to save phone numbers in my contraption because it's too much of a mental effort to get to grips with it.

Sorry, dear reader, got to dash. My phone's ringing. "Hello, yes dear, I'm on the train. Sorry, I'll be late tonight, points failure at Grantham. OK, bye, love you."

Another pint please, landlord. No, make it two!

Updated: 09:03 Tuesday, April 08, 2003