The Importance of Being a Luddite

My daughter wants an iphone. I am Against it. I tell her lamely that it's too expensive. She says she'll pay for it with her £1 a week pocket money. I tell her she's only nine years old and I was 35 when I got my first mobile. She says she's the Only One in her class without one and that even the French teacher illustrated conjugation with the assumption that 'We all love our iphones'.

I pause. I'm not why sure why I am so viscerally dismayed by the notion. Probably it's to do with my instinct that anything that wasn't around in the 1970s is unnecessary to child development. Which is why my children can feast unfettered on Iced Gems, but I have vigorous prejudices against Haribous.

We put on a DVD of The Railway Children (1970) and my intolerance suddenly crystalises. 'See that!' I say jabbing zestfully at Roberta's tumbling hair. My daughter stares at me, anxious. I tell her about the sacred rituals of Coming of Age: how maturity in more ordered eras was marked by the putting up of girls' hair and letting down of their hems. 'Now,' I conclude, 'the only milestone in adolescence is a diptheria booster.'

I can see enlightenment dawning. 'The day you start secondary school you can walk there on your own for the first time with your first, brand new mobile in your pocket and you'll be 11 years old and feel 10 ft tall.'

My daughter nods. 'I think I like that idea.' There's a pause. 'So can I save up for a Blackberry?'

Comments

  1. Kate19 October 2011 at 09:27

    My nine year old nephew got a Blackberry for his birthday having lost his iphone in school - is it just me that finds that mildly disturbing...?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous19 October 2011 at 09:36

    Eeek! My teenagers all have various mobiles but I dread to think hold old Bean gets (she's now 3) before she asks.

    Goodness I remember getting a pager back in the day - and I was 21 then!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Him Up North19 October 2011 at 21:15

    BlackBerry is where it's at for the kids. From there it's a short step to ransacking the shopping precinct. Be warned. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. A Little Light Work23 October 2011 at 20:00

    Have you suggested joining two empty tins together with a length of string? Might buy you a few months until the kids twig it doesn't work...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Daily Mail Columnists Should Wear Burkas

Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones has provoked the ire of Twitter with by declaring that mummy bloggers are blinkered dimwits whose lives are spiced by Napisan. I'm afraid I have to sympathise with her, for all of her prejudices echo my own: Writing about my life has pretty much ruined it. Supper last night was an elderly carrot glued to the fridge shelf by a pool of brown mucus and the floor was flooded when I left the bath taps running because Blogger has diverted me from domestic essentials. I've had to shut the children in front of the television when a new post has assailed me and some family members no longer speak to me because Twitter interactions leave me no time to reach the telephone. But there is a big part of me that thinks writing should be hard: you should cringe whenever you press that 'publish' button. Artists – and I'm sorry, I do consider myself an artist – have to wrench the dirtiest, most disgusting part of their inner soul and show it t...
Read more

The Various Uses of Rubber

I have ordered a new pair of wellies from Amazon for the daily walk to school. My current hardly-at-all-old pair has developed a fissure along one toe. I only noticed this when I was wading along the stream that flows brownly past bobbing Argos bags en route to the afternoon pick up, and I was not pleased. They are a glamorous pair with pink spots and white swirls, bought to ease my daughter's pain in ackowledging a wellie-wearing, stream-paddling mother in public. I now distrust wellies with spots and swirls, so order a safe-looking green pair. Better to be waterproof than glamorous. Royal Mail gets them as far as my door, thrusts through a 'Sorry you were out' card, and promptly loses them. Amazon is sympathetic and dispatches a replacement pair. This also makes it to my door and again a card is left. This time I decide to pick them up in person from the Royal Mail depot. The man behind the glass screen makes off with my delivery card and probably has a cup of tea and...
Read more

A DIY Guide to the Middle-Classes

I wonder sometimes what I am. I have lived the last decade on an inner city council estate, amid Oxford academia, in a remote country town and in London suburbia. In the first we were, with our relentless consonants and sagging bookshelves, regarded as aristocrats. In the second, as the 'squeezed middle'. In the third, as city sophisticates and now, sometimes, isolated in my tweed amid the Ralph Lauren and the hoodies, I feel myself a bumpkin. Class should no longer matter. Nowadays, for most of us, it's more a question of perception than birth. But the perception matters. My daughter battles to adjust speech, habits and dress to blend in with each new environment; the political parties compete to woo the amorphous throng they deem Middle England and Melvyn Bragg has started a television series on class and culture. The British, he decides, no longer define themselves by class, but by the music they listen to, the books they read. I listen to Dolly Parton and Beethoven....
Read more