2. MOBILE CRICKETS
‘If you don’t keep up with the times now, Gran, how will you manage in the future?’
‘Matthew, I’m seventy-five. Remember?’
‘So? Didn’t stop you learning how to use that mobile phone Dad gave you, did it?’
True, Kath had mastered that at her son’s insistence. At her age, you tend not to think too far ahead, but her son was thinking ahead. So, to satisfy him, Kath had learned how to operate a mobile phone in preparation for when she became less mobile herself. Shame she kept forgetting where she left it, and it was so ridiculously small she needed glasses to find it.
‘Right, Gran, it’s all set up now.’ Matthew pressed a button and a screen flickered into life. ‘You’ll get the hang of it in no time.’
Watching Matthew demonstrate how “easy” it all was, Kath was ready to give up before even trying. And she would have admitted defeat if Matthew hadn’t said how his school mates thought it really cool that he was giving his old computer to his switched-on gran.
‘It’ll cheer you up,’ he said. ‘After that disappointment about your Josie and all.’
Ah, bless. Kath hadn’t realised young Matthew had tuned into the fact that she’d been feeling low lately about her sister’s visit from America being cancelled. What with Josie’s fall, which had somehow led to her going into residential care, neither of them could work out how they’d see each other again. Even if Kath could raise the fare to California, she could hardly stay with Josie in an old people’s home, could she?
‘Are you watching, Gran?’
‘Yes, love.’ Shoving a tissue back up her cardy sleeve, Kath leaned forward and tried to concentrate.
Now she’s sitting at the computer, fascinated by the fact that she can pass a thing called a cursor over a set of words, pick up the highlighted words and move them to another position in her page of text. And she’s actually doing it. She’s just picking up part of a sentence when, drat, the mobile phone rings in the other room. Except it doesn’t actually ring, as such. It sounds more like a cacophony of rioting crickets in pain, and it makes Kath jump so she drops the words she’s just picked up.
After removing her reading glasses and grabbing her walking around ones, she rushes into the lounge and reaches for the magnifying glass which is tied to the phone by a bit of string. Without her reading glasses, she needs this to locate the tiny button that activates the “lift receiver” function, but by the time she untangles the string, the crickets have stopped rioting.
If her reading glasses weren’t reclining on a mouse pad in another room, she’d be able to see the number of the last received call. Sure, the magnifying glass does serve to show the caller’s number, but the digits on the miniature screen taper alarmingly from huge and distorted on one side to tiny and unreadable at the other side.
Kath’s stress level is rising and she wants to slam a receiver down in annoyance. But you can’t do that with these new-fangled things, can you? And brandishing a magnifying glass to locate a tiny button to press to terminate a call somehow doesn’t afford the same degree of satisfaction. So Kath throws the phone onto the settee, and a series of blippy-brip-type squeals tells her that the attached magnifying glass has bounced on a few rubber buttons.
She stomps back to the computer, swaps walking around glasses for reading glasses and casts her eyes over the screen, trying to find where she dropped the clump of words. Aha – there they are. Her carefully thought out article is now saying: The consumer has cause to question if this is worse the delightful aroma of freshly brewed coffee or better than the alternative on offer.
Kath swipes the cursor over the delightful aroma of freshly brewed coffee and pauses as a thought occurs to her. Could the bouncing magnifying glass have dialled a number? Except there were only four or five blippy-brips, and no telephone numbers are that short. She can’t be connected to a call that’s costing her an arm and a leg while she sits here juggling with words.
Kath depresses the mouse button and lifts the highlighted words. They’re poised in transit, on their way to a sense-making location, when another thought slams into her brain: What if the magnifying glass hit the redial button? She could have been connected to the last dialed number for the past seven or eight minutes. She lets go of the mouse, and the delightful aroma of freshly brewed coffee drops into another unintelligible situation as she tries to remember who she last called.
Uh-oh – Josie! She’d called her on the mobile last week, just to check if it could really reach her sister in America.
No time to swap glasses, but according to her reading ones, the step-up bit between the split-level lounge and dining room isn’t exactly where it used to be. A quick trip and Kath finds herself plunging towards the floor, taking a pile of magazines off the coffee table en route. Her glasses are twisted round the side of her head, one of the arms carrying out an ear wax excavation job, and her left wrist is sending frantic pain signals to her brain. All of which is threatening to swamp her hitherto urgent desire to check if she’s running up a bill for a long term transatlantic call at peak rates.
Kath is about to curl up into a foetal position on the carpet with her head buried beneath a pile of National Geographic when a chorus of hyperactive crickets erupts into full voice again.
Raising a zinging head, Kath focuses on the settee, where a shaft of sunlight through the window flashes on a magnifying glass. Using her good arm, she drags herself to the settee and reaches for the magnifying glass. Then gropes for the phone, which she hopes is still on the other end of a bit of string, and stabs a finger in the general direction of where the lift receiver button was last seen through appropriate optical lenses.
Bull’s eye!
‘Can I speak to Dave please?’ a breathy voice lilts into Kath’s ear.
Who the devil’s Dave? Kath’s pain-befuddled brain wonders.
‘Who the devil’s Dave?’ she asks, and assumes it’s pain making her voice sound sharp.
‘He’s supposed to have mended my blender last week.’ Breathy Voice sounds slightly indignant. ‘I really, really want to know if it’s ready, only I’ve got thirty-eight vol-au-vents to make by Thursday.’
Dave’s Electrical Repairs! Kath might have guessed. His number is far too close to hers for comfort. All it requires is for some moron to dial a 3 and a 7 instead of a 7 and a 3 and Kath gets to hear from neurotic housewives who can’t possibly exist another day without their ceramic hostess tray or whatever. How can they be so stupid as to trust a cowboy outfit with nothing more than a mobile phone number?
Mind you, thirty eight vol-au-vents by Thursday is a bit serious.
‘Sorry,’ says Kath. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help, I…’
‘Well you flaming well should be able to!’ Forget breathy and lilting; this voice suddenly relocates to Billingsgate. ‘Just because you’re nothing but a cowboy outfit with a mobile phone number, you needn’t think I’m stupid!’
‘Excuse me, Madam…’ Kath takes a deep breath and rests her aching wrist on a cool magnifying glass. ‘I’ve got one thing to say to you, and this is not a recorded message. The consumer has cause to question if this is worse the delightful aroma of freshly brewed coffee or better than the…’
She’s in full swing when a noise, not unlike that of a dolphin with hiccups, informs her that her phone battery is flat. Then the discovery that her work got lost when she tripped over the cable and unplugged the computer is the last straw. With tears making their way through wrinkles, she admits defeat. What on earth had made her think she could learn to use a computer at her age?
She’s about to phone her grandson and tell him to take the thing away when her sister’s letter arrives:
Dear Kath,
I just got me a computer too. Get on-line, why don’t you, then we can have fun exchanging emails. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I feel like talking to you…
That was it then, wasn’t it? Who knew if the sisters would ever see each other again, but if Josie could handle a computer at eighty, how could Kath give in to being too old to end her sentences with dot com?