How did we ever manage our lives without mobile phones?

[GT49er]

I'm just thankful that I spent a lot of my younger years with my parents having absolutely NO IDEA where I was!

 

[goldstone]

There was a phone booth in a bar in Atlanta years ago which had various background noise tapes you could select.

So if you were calling home to say you were still in the office select the "office sounds" tape. For car broken down on the highway, the "traffic noise" tape!!

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

and there were queues of cars at train stations waiting to pick up relatives from the delayed trains (not that trains were delayed back then eh)

There was a bloke on my train tonight, soon as we got to Burgess Hill, barking orders at his missus re: picking up. No niceties, or even a faked attempt at a minimum of basic decent human behaviour. Just barked 'Preston Park! Six Ten!' down the phone then switched off as soon as he knew she'd received her master's command. Not sure that's progress. And I sincerely hope she's shagging the window-cleaner

 

[ewe2]

It used to be possible to live a life without even a land line at home.

Coin operated telephone boxes were everywhere. People wrote letters to each other. People knocked on front doors to find out whether their friends were in. People went to pubs to meet up (or not).

People met up at the shops as well, because we didn't have freezers and we went shopping every day (except Sundays and early closing days, obviously) and we didn't have cars either. And there weren't fast food places, so we always cooked at home. Even students. Launderettes were good places to meet friends.

Life was good.

I think you are right........

 

[dougdeep]

Never had a phone at home until I was 23, and no mobile until I was 54.

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

We had a phone at home in 1973 after waiting more than a year on the waiting list for a line. Before that any really urgent incoming calls were made to our next door neighbour at No. 92 and to make a phone call we had to use the telephone kiosk at the end of Twineham Road near the bus stop. Actually come to think of it the home phone was barely used , perhaps 2 or 3 times a week as phone calls had an importance to them.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Never had a phone at home until I was 23

To be fair though, they weren't invented until you were 22

 

[Super Steve Earle]

Only have one for work.

Don't have my own and I love it.

 

[HG201]

What i don't understand is how people met up with each other. Say for example you were going to a football match and you were meeting a mate at the ground. You were unclear about where you were supposed to meet him what do you do?
Write him a letter?

 

[Nottseagull]

What i don't understand is how people met up with each other. Say for example you were going to a football match and you were meeting a mate at the ground. You were unclear about where you were supposed to meet him what do you do?
Write him a letter?

Actually yes, but on a postcard (postage was cheaper than for letters). Before people had home phones, they could send a postcard in the morning which would get to a local address that afternoon, or certainly the following morning. The Royal Mail was a service to be proud of, not the shambles that it is today.

 

[Super Steve Earle]

What i don't understand is how people met up with each other. Say for example you were going to a football match and you were meeting a mate at the ground. You were unclear about where you were supposed to meet him what do you do?
Write him a letter?

Organise a time & place on the phone before you leave the house. Simples.

 

[HG201]

Organise a time & place on the phone before you leave the house. Simples.

What if the meeting place had been blocked off or something?

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

At least pre-mobile era your life outside work was your own. Then gung-ho types started adding their mobile numbers to the bottom of their emails, thereby ensuring they were on call WAY beyond the nine to five. Nowadays the platforms of rural Sussex railway stations are alive with wage slaves phoning the office at seven in the morning. What's that all about?

 

[Barrel of Fun]

People did a lot of waiting around for friends to turn up. Churchill Square used to be full of people standing around, thinking 'I'll give them another five minutes, then I'm GOING HOME!'

That is, effectively, what I was going to write. Hanging around various bus/train stations was the flavour of the decade. Whilst the mobile phone has made it soooooo much easier, I would say that the company has stayed consistent.