In heaven, where there is no depreciation

Thursday 20 September 2012

Hellair?  Lorst property? I'd jest like to report a lorst telephone.  What's thet? You've only a  gramophone and a tin of peaches?  Look again, sir! Now you're jest being silly.  Do I sound like the type of gel who'd wear size twelve brogues? What, a whole bagful of them? What unspeakable fool would throw those away?


Like many Englishmen, or perhaps it's just chaps in general, Edward doesn't see the point in getting new things when he already has a whatever-it-is that is perfectly serviceable.  On honeymoon, we stood on the dock at Fort William waiting for the ferry to Iona.  We had left London in the hottest August on record and found ourselves standing, with the worst sort of Champagne hangover, in the slate-grey stair-rod rain which usually welcomes folk to Scotland.

Edward squelched off and reappeared in a full-length Drizabone, towering above the crowds like a jackaroo in exile.  He was giddy with the thrill of purchase.  "It's an amazing coat, look these straps go round your legs for riding and if it snows it just slides off this cape thingie.  And the best thing,"  he fished about in the ridiculously huge pocket.  Out came a half-bottle of peaty, oaky Oban single malt, whose smoky scent will forever take me back to that squally day of tilting ferry and a springy heather climb, the sudden sunshine on John Smith's grave, dolly's cottages in colours to shame the ferrous skies and above all, the kind of easy rolling laughter that dances on the edge of everything when you are young and excited and let loose on a bottle of whisky at 11 am.

We moved house later that year, not in an organised fashion.  Still young and excited, I was pregnant and prone to sudden narcolepsy and memory losses.  I packed all Edward's footwear, (the shoes that had been made for him as a 21st present, brown Church's brogues for Sunday country pub walks, his smart black Loakes for tramping the Square Mile, his ancient wellies that were the only ones big enough for his feet, yards of wooly sock and acres of threadbare corduroy) in a black bin back.  The same kind that I was merrily filling with all the crap superfluous to our next house and flinging down the chute into the communal rubbish bins.  I will spare you the details of the horrific subsequent mix-up, but you may be assured that the sound of rolling easy laughter was absent for several days.

His phone dates from the last century, just.  He has tried to teach the bots to be proud of sentiment and frugality.  However, we three all have iStuff.  Edward's Nokia has sellotape keeping the battery in and never gets a signal in the pub.  It has almost a decade's worth of photos on it and every morning he clicks the noisy buttons to read the papers online in Delhi, Sydney, New York.  He says, "This is all I need, look at this, I'm reading papers across the world from bed."  The bots say "oh Dad, your phone makes us want to cry."

Last night, in a taxi after a long conference-and-drinks in London, the phone fell out of a hole which has inexplicably appeared in the Driza pocket after a solid 13 years of wear.  It was returned, hurrah for black cab drivers, to Edward, but had been sat on by a large passenger and may be beyond repair.  The bots have been online before school, squabbling about os-something and does he need a cloud.  They cannot wait to help him choose a new one.  He is inconsolable.  I've just put a bottle of Oban on the Waitrose order.

34 comments:

  1. I can identify with Edward, and I do tend towards the school of waste not want not, but with the techy stuff you do have to upgrade it otherwise it just wont work. And oh, the joy of a new laptop or phone. The latter I rarely use, well in the sense that I rarely use it when I could and should really be talking to the person I'm dining/lunching/drinking with. Now that is something to pass on to your bots.

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    1. I veer between joy and panic at a new bit of technology, I'm afraid. I'm always a bit scared that I'll lose something in the transition and that I'll completely miss the point and be operating at half-cock. Story of my life, rather.

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  2. I am definitely of the Edward school. I take great pride in telling my grandsons that my shoes are older than their mothers. Although the other day Ethan asked why his mother threw out the bread. Old and moldy was the answer, like Granddad was his quip.

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    1. James, wear the age and mould with pride, I say!

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  3. My little-big-ones shamed mr.offof into buying new clothes. They said he couldn't pick them up from school until he stopped wearing his shorts (that were pre-marriage)and Jesus sandals that may well have pre-dated Jesus himself!
    x

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    1. Offof - so is your husband wearing the lovely donna summer T-shirt and pants combo that seared my eyeballs earlier this week on Tintin's blog round-up of some catwalk show. If so, please ensure he does school pickup all next week.

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  4. We have a whole cupboard full of whisky, given to my beloved every Christmas by patients grateful to have been kept alive for another year. I'm sure we have a spare.

    My husband's phone is also archaic and he can't text for toffee. If he tries to send me a naughty one, he's gone off the idea before he reaches the end.

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    1. Trish, respect for not selling, raffling or necking it. The idea of him going off the boil through tech-weariness - ah, I feel his pain...

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  5. Hello Elizabeth:
    What joy to have found you!

    Our view is that Edward types are the salt of the earth. Never swayed by the latest technology, remaining true to the great things in life such as an aged Malt and a pair of Loakes, what more could one wish for? In addition, as he clearly is a man who appreciates the finer things in life and will not have his head turned by any flibbertigibbet who teeters across his path, real women know that they will be cherished. Lucky you!

    Having found you, we are Following to stay in touch.

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    1. Hello J&L - absolutely delightful to meet you both, what immediate grasps of character you display!! I am lucky indeed. So glad we have met, your blog looks a real treat for me...

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  6. Perhaps buying Edward a nice pair of R.M. Williams boots now would make belated amends? And is he so sure he needs a phone? The true chap would manage without.

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    1. Mise - I would but i have sworn to never go near his shoe department again. I crept in with a lovely pair of brown docks this summer and trust me, the hurt is still there...

      No, he would be more than happy to go without and send a runner with a cleft stick or aged manservant should the need to communicate remotely arise.

      I have been to your blog. I laughed a lot. I hope we will be friends.

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  7. My husband has clothes and shoes older than our grown children. It is a source of pride for him and shame for me when seen in public!
    Great fun read.

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    1. They like what they know don't they? Edward has a jacket that bears the stains of baby sick. Our daughter is almost 6 feet.

      Lovely to meet you and I will be over for a cup of tea later.

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  8. Sounds like my kind of guy. give him an extra hug, he'll need it

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    1. He got loads. The new iPhone is launched today. Nobody has mentioned it...

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  9. It is beyond me why you saw fit in this otherwise delightful little ditty, to take a shot at African cab drivers.

    Get the boy the newest version of the iPhone and be done with it. Oh, and bespeak a Green Shell Cordovan cover for it.

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    1. I just won a little bet with myself that there would be one candidate for the naughty step today. Off you go, one minute for every year of your life, you know the drill.

      He's bombed off to the office today with a spare Nokia from around 2008. I might treat him to a Stoke City cover.

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  10. For a moment I thought you were describing my husband, complete with the taped cell...although Drew's is duct-taped. This entry made me laugh out loud after a particularly shitty day. Thank you.
    Heidi

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    1. Hello Heidi - so sorry your day was crap and very pleased indeed that 1. you laughed and 2. I am not alone. Duct trumps sellotape, you win!

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  11. My husband's little old flip phone sends your husband's a grand salute, and thinks it deserves a medal for hanging in there...tape and all! My dear one's little flip is tapeless, but it's also textless and newsless, that must deserve some sort of medal as well...or maybe it's just mental!
    Off now to thank Lisa for sending me across the pond...it's been lovely meeting you!
    xo J~

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    1. 24 - how lovely to meet you, thanks for also reassuring me I'm in good company. Textless AND newsless. Surely he doesn't just use it to phone people. The shame...

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  12. ADG - a 'black cab driver' in London is a driver of the iconic black London taxi cab, it's not a reference to the driver's ethnic origins.

    I fished my mobile phone out of the loo, whence my toddler son had thrown it, and grim-faced I disassembled it (the phone, not my offspring), dried it out and reassembled. I will not be parted from my antediluvian but familiar technology. I had a short-wave radio with a manual tuner that just needed a repair but Husband sent it to recycling and in lieu bought me a digital replacement. I have never touched it and still sulk about it eight years on. I should put 'Grudge Bearing' on my CV, I'm so accomplished at it.
    Hester

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    1. Dear Hester - grudge bearing made me laugh; are you perhaps my sister-in-law?? Edward had a similar radio that was more crackle and hiss than World Service and showed similar fury when I tried to 'help' by replacing it.

      ADG has probably been in more black cabs that I've had hot dinners. He's rather a scamp.

      Agree though about what stars black cabbies are, I've had many similar experience, lost things returned, etc. Once we dropped off a boyfriend and the cabbie told me in no uncertain terms what a tosser he was. Said boyfriend then got off with my flatmate.

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    2. Anonymous--that was just ADG's sense of humor. He wasn't serious, Silly.

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    3. Am I your sister-in-law? That would be fun! It would be easy to verify, I ride side-saddle(very much like your blog banner), tell jokes in bad Latin and have a PhD in Criminology, and after a rather wild party I once threw up into a black cab in my great-grandmother's sable hat, so as to be polite and not soil said cab, there aren't many that fit that description.
      Sorry ADG I misread your humour, I presumed that you were a touchy American, 'divided by a common language' and all that (now I'll end up offending the transatlantic cousins so will just shut up and crawl back under my cosy rock.)
      Hester

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    4. re-emerging from my rock to amend previous sentence, a glass of port after a hard day marshalling small fiendish offspring and my brain is kaput. The correct grammar should have read, 'after a rather wild party I once threw up into my great-grandmother's sable hat in a black cab'. I wasn't wearing the hat at the time. That mangled sentence required so much intellectual effort to get straight in my exhausted state that I think I need another snifter to recover...
      Hester

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  13. P.S. As a further contextualisation of 'black cab drivers' for those who are not British, they are synonymous with being salt-of-the-earth, honest, competent professionals, in contrast to many of the unlicensed minicab-taxi-driver brethren. As with all tropes, there are exceptions to the rule but I've found it to be mostly true. When a young women returning from a late night/early morning clubbing in central London to my flat, I told the black cab driver upfront that I only had so much cash and to drop me off when the meter reached that amount. He said nothing, just switched off the meter when it hit that figure, drove me to my front door and told me he had a daughter my age and would never drop me off randomly in the middle of nowhere. Very good eggs generally, those chaps (and chapesses).
    Hester

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  14. Sprightly written and souped up with enough consumer references that you should take adverts. At the least, a free bottle of Oban.

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  15. Welcome to "By Invitation Only!" Tish sent me a quick note yesterday, and I want you to know how delighted I am that you will be joining us on our monthly wanderings. So lovely to know you, and cannot wait to know more. xx's Marsha

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  16. Been sent round by Tish... such a lovely girl. Loved this post and hope the Bots enjoy a weekend of picking out a new phone for him... I could not live without my Iphone now even though I swore blind that my brick sized Nokia was perfectly fine for years and years!

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  17. I know what a black cab is. I've been in more of them than most Brits. bam. lowercase.

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  18. Just found you - recommended by Lisa at 'Privilege'. Gosh, you write well! Looking forward to going through the rest when I've got time.

    Cheers,
    Eleanorjane

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  19. You're on a roll cherie!

    My-Reason-For-Living-In-France is precisely the same, however when something is beyond repair he wants exactly (!) the same thing as a replacement, i.e. light blue button-down oxford shirts, navy or gray V-neck cashmere sweaters. And, that's it!

    Not much fun shopping.

    xoxo

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Please leave a comment if you can be remotely bothered - anything you have to say is valuable and I absolutely love hearing from you all. Elizabeth