I’ve got a new phone.
Whenever this happens my wife insists on getting a screen protector for it, and this time was no different. It makes sense of course, I know that – in fact I’ve only needed to replace my old phone because its screen protector broke (giving its life in the line of duty) and then before a new one could be fitted, the screen (now unprotected) broke too.
Nevertheless, when I came home on Wednesday to find the screen protector for my new, Trump-baiting Huawei phone had arrived, I must admit my heart sank; and sure enough when my other half got back from work soon afterwards, literally her first action was to demand my phone and to render its screen duly protected.
I don’t know why I resent the whole screen protector thing – well, I do, but it’s wholly irrational. There’s something about the newy newness of a bright, clear, new phone screen that is in someway tarnished, or at least diminished, by being placed behind a protector. It’s the same kind of minuscule bereavement when the first icon is put on the desktop of a brand-new computer, or the first footprint into a fall of snow.
Of course I know nothing can stay new forever. But knowing it isn’t quite the same as accepting it. There’s something hard to explain about the appeal of newness, whether it’s the semi-mythical ‘new car smell’ or the electric buzz of a new relationship. Or the shiny-but-unprotected pixels of a new phone.
“After the passion fades,” my Dad told us before we were married (this was his pep-talk in his role as officiating minister, I hasten to add, it wasn’t an awkward after-dinner conversation) –“After the passion fades, there’s a great joy in companionship and support.” That’s true, and no doubt if it had been ten years later he would have used the analogy of a new and ‘naked’ phone screen versus the wisdom of applying a screen protector.
New things carry with them a sense of unbounded possibility, whether that’s in the excited imagining of what might happen on that first date, to all the ludicrous things promised in adverts for mobile phones. But it’s not real, and when the newness wears off, when the passion fades, is when we get to the truth of things. It’s nice to have a shiny phone… but one that works when it’s needed, where the reminders pop up on time, where it gets a signal when I really need to make a call, is much more useful.
Even this blog, which started last year with a hoover repair and almost started this year with a washing-machine repair until my wife (at a bit of a loose end without any phones in need of protecting) interceded and did it while I was at work; even this blog isn’t new any more. The notion of adding to it weekly lasted quite a while, but in truth when I’m moaning about TV programmes or praising The Sound of Music there’s a clear element of padding to it, a bit of classic Doctor Who third episode ‘running up and down corridors, getting locked up/escaping/getting locked up again’.
I don’t want to let it disappear completely, but it turns out I don’t have burning issues to address every week – so I should blog when I need to, not because I have to. The passion has faded, the newness and novelty has faded, now it’s got to have a reason and a purpose. We’ll see how that goes.
After all, it’s a new year now, I don’t want to just… phone it in.
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 