Buying a new phone

has proved to be an interesting experience. 

Youngest Nephew, who knows far more about those things than the rest of us put together, did some research for me. I have followed his advice. I am now in possession of something that the Younger Generations would probably not want to know about. 

It is a phone you just "flip" to open and answer...and, even more importantly, it is small enough to fit into a pocket. The flip top means I cannot "accidentally" make a call while pedalling along. It also appears to work in a much more logical way.

Next-to-youngest Nephew appeared yesterday and took the SIM card out of the old phone, transferred it to the new phone and, between us, we did things. We tested it and it seems to work. Now I need to wait for Middle Cat to make one of her many calls to me.  

What was interesting however that Nephew who was helping me admitted he was not quite sure how an old (in his words "ancient") dial telephone worked. He had seen one of course but he had never used one. We talked about computers too. He has grown up with computers. His father was working with them before they were commonplace. They have had computers in the house for as long as Y... can remember. (There are at least five, perhaps more.) Y...uses one without really thinking about. Internet access is something he just accepts. The idea that you might need to go to the library to get all your information is something he thinks of as very odd indeed. As for the idea of an encyclopaedia in many volumes where you might be able to look for "anything"? He just laughed.

I remember those old "Arthur Mee" volumes. My mother and her brother had them. If I remember correctly they were given to them by a cousin of their mother. As children my brother and I read them but we knew that they were very dated even then. My maternal grandfather "invested" in another fancy set. They sat there unopened and unused unless we children happened to be there...and we read them as a means of escape from having to make conversation with adults we did not like. 

I tried to explain the idea of an encyclopaedia to Nephew. Oh yes, he understood.  "But Aunty Cat how did they choose what to put in there? Even the internet doesn't have everything and that is huge." 

I thought about this again as I put the little phone on to "charge". If I went on to a much more expensive "phone plan" I could access the internet on a small black box which has some buttons. There would be so much more information at a paw pat or two than there was in all those volumes and even the "internet" doesn't have everything. I wonder what is coming next.