I ask because Cousin Belinda accused me of using a posh voice when I answered the landline yesterday.
Who still has a landline? But let's leave that for a while.
My mother always used to adopt a posh accent when she answered the phone. I have no idea why because we certainly weren't posh. She was a Norfolk gal but didn't have a particularly Norfolk accent. But she didn't have a posh one either.
I guess in those days people would put on a posh accent because they didn't want to be thought of as "common ". After all the BBC was full of them.
Our telephone number started as Norwich 48638 and then they popped a 0 between the 4 and the 8. I think they added at least one digit to the dialling code as well.
Do you remember when the number for Scotland Yard was Whitehall 1212? No idea why I pointed that out but it's just a number that has stuck in my mind.
And remember how you always answered the phone with the number but now nobody does. Can you imagine answering a mobile phone with the number? What a pavlova* that would have been.
Most of the time nowadays the phone comes up with the name of the caller anyway so there's no need for politeness.
But who still has a landline? Well we do and some people still ring it on the grounds that I often leave my mobile around the house and don't hear it when it rings.
Of course it doesn't ring as such. I currently have one of the basic tones that come with the phone. In the past I've had a number of my favourite music as my ringtone but found that quite confusing.
I started with the opening theme from Tubular Bells which of course was used in The Exorcist and is quite disturbing. Then I had MacArthur Park and then Mockingbird** which has left you scratching your heads at my weirdness.
It was ok until I missed an important call one day as I heard someone playing Mockingbird and was so surprised that I forgot it was me and it was my phone that was ringing.
I don't remember as a boy when the phone made its first appearance in our house. I don't remember one in the shop so I guess it was when we sold that and moved to a bungalow. I do remember it was a massive black plastic thing with a long brown chord which attached the receiver and always got twisted. It wasn't very portable. In fact it wasn't portable at all. It had a big dial and if you had a lengthy number it seemed to take forever. It was certainly no good if you wanted to make a quick call.
I don't really know why we still have a landline, perhaps it's just habit as I never use it to phone out on, particularly when I get unlimited minutes with my mobile.
Mobiles have come a long way. I remember them when you got an hour of calls free a month and then that was doubled. I also remember when you got hour long calls free with landlines but then you had to call off and redial.
I also remember getting home after an evening out and wanting to find out football results. There were a few alternatives. There was Ceefax on the BBC and Teletext on ITV. That took a lot of scrolling around to get the results. Then there was a telephone number where you listened to the results being read out by a man or woman with a posh voice (there we are again). It seemed to take forever to get to the result you wanted. Now you can get updates by the minute on the Internet. My how times have changed.
*. *. *
I liked the comment on Facebook about Elon Musk shooting himself in the foot by changing the name of Twitter to X. I certainly agree with that. He has destroyed its character. You used to be on Twitter and send Tweets. You just can't say I'm on X and I'm sending a (well not exactly sure what you would be sending).
* - had you there as the word I was thinking of was obviously pullover.
** -A song by my favourite group.