Skip to main content

The telephone, the typewriter and the confused.


My life seems to be littered with conversations such as the one told below. If you look on my blog you’ll see ‘Hypo or Hyper’ and ‘The Blackbird in the Garden’ and the triumph that was ‘The Telephone’. All are based on the other person’s misunderstanding of a content of my life, or their life. I sometimes, in fact often, continue conversations purely for the humour that results from them.  


# Ooooowh, what’s that noise?
It’s just my phone.
#Sounds like an old typewriter
Yep, it is. It’s for my texts.
#That must take a long time.
What?
#Typewriting texts.
It doesn’t type them, it’s only a notification.
#Mine is a ping, like a microwave.
Mine was too. I changed it so I would know I have a text.
#But you must have to wait a while for it to be typed.
No, it’s just a notification noise. I downloaded it.
#How does it send texts then if it uses a typewriter.
It doesn’t use a typewriter, it’s only the notification sound.
#Mine just pings and the message is there.
Mine makes that typewriter noise and the text is on screen
#You must know people who can type really fast!
Why?
#To send a text that you can read instantly.
But most people can do that. All phones do that.
#Not if they have to use an old-fashioned typewriter.
But they’re not using a typewriter.
#But your phone makes that noise like typing.
It’s only a notification noise, not an actual typewriter.
#Mine just pings like a microwave and the text appears, I don’t have to wait for anyone to finish typing like you do.
I don’t have to wait. The text is there instantly. Like yours.
#But your phone uses an old typewriter to write the text.
It doesn’t it’s only the notification noise. Like ‘You have a text’ just like your ping noise.
# (Thinks) But my ping is instant. Yours taps away till the text is written.
It doesn’t, it’s just the noise it makes to tell me I have an incoming text.
#Why don’t you use a ping noise, it’s faster.
I might try that then, to save the other person’s fingers.
#See, I’m not all that silly.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Protein Man of Oxford Street- Stanley Owen Green.

I wrote this Obituary piece for The Guardian about Stanley Green while I was an undergraduate at Goldsmiths' College.  I contacted The Guardian and asked them if I could submit it for publication. It was sent off to them and I waited in eager anticipation for their reply. It was published on Wednesday January 26th 1994,   the Editor  made no changes or additions except by adding some photographs (the photographs used here are later additions by me): "A Consuming Passion.... Stanley Owen Green who has died aged aged 78, was that tall thin man with steel-rimmed glasses who marched it seemed for an eternity up and down London's Oxford Street. It was his banner that made him famous, held high above his head and proclaiming "LESS LUST FROM PROTEIN" in large white letters. Underneath the banner he endured the taunts of sticky schoolchildren and the spittle of office workers alike, to bring his unique, indeed puzzling message to the people of London. He later wate...
3 comments
Read more

The Roswell Returns

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” As those words echoed around Mission Control in Houston a round of spontaneous applause broke out across the site and in the control room. There were yelps and hollers of triumph echoing around the whole of NASA that momentous day in July 1969. In the Command Module Michael Collins was monitoring the vital controls that kept it orbiting the Moon. He flipped the carbon dioxide uptake switch, looked at the battery charge meters, oxygen levels and closely watched the radar screen. He sat back in his flight chair and watched the instrumentation flick and whirr. He daren’t relax, he didn’t relax at all. He paid great attention to the radar screen as he was commanded to. He had to monitor it for spooks, intruders or ghosts. He knew he was looking for Foo Fighters. They did show up on radar, aircrews had confirmed that as fact. It was how fast they appeared and disappeared that threw most pilots. There had been warnings by the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Christmas Gothic - The Sojourn of The Soul

As the man came in from work, he looked on the hall table as he did every night, ostensibly for any letters that had been delivered that day. There were none that day. There was, however, a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. The label on it was addressed to him, ‘To Harry, With Love’ it read. It looked like his wife had bought him a book, which was unusual for her to even go into a book shop let alone buy him a book. He picked it up and felt its weight it was quite a weighty tome. He unwrapped the book and looked at the title: A Goode Wyfe: The Sojourn Of The Soul. He noted the archaic spelling of the title; she had chosen well. It looked very interesting and was certainly very old, the leather binding and the gold lettering on the spine and cover gave that away. It was well thumbed too and the pages fell open on their own.   He looked at the imprint, last imprint 1818, first imprint 1313. He did a quick sum in his head, those two dates added together made 3131, a mirror image ...
Post a Comment
Read more