Being set in one's ways, obstinate, idle and inflexible, is a recipe for disaster in today's world. I realised very quickly that although the mobile phone signal is awful in this back woods remote provincial part of fair England, that one cannot get along in society today without a mobile phone, especially a smartphone. They are necessary. I could not order a pizza without a security text, or publish a book, or receive my wages from my editing work (today - when the mobile signal seems to be getting better here) without one. Yet Stalin seems to imagine that he is perfectly okay without one. He just tried to pay the Council Tax for the house, but could not do so without a mobile phone. I tried to tell him that they are necessary, but he is stubborn as an ox, unwilling to adapt to the modern times. I once said to him, "You are the only person in the world I know that doesn't have a mobile phone." to which he replied, "Moi aaaauntie don't 'av one neiver."
Stalin was complaining because the phone call to the bank he just made (on his landline, which has a horrid crunchy sound in the background whenever you use it) interrupted his television programme, as did me advising him to get a mobile phone. I replied, "Were you to watch this on iPlayer, you could pause the programme, or even rewind it." (He still uses an old fashioned television set, so old, it has a big blue patch in the centre of the screen which is evident the whole time). I remember watching televion as a child, and wondering how marvellous it would be if one could pause or rewind or fast forward a television programme. Then, the video recorder came out, some years later, and we children could not believe how wondrous an invention this was, being able to watch James Cameron's Aliens whenever we had free time. Even in that film there is a scene when Paul Reiser's character receives a call in the small hours after Sigourney Weaver's character had a nightmare about the xenomorph, asking to go on the mission to LV426. The call was not just any call, but a live video call (albeit in black and white through some huge non-portable device). I wondered how amazing it might be, if one day, we may be able to call people and see them on the other end of the telephone, perhaps in the far future.
Stalin is still living in 1986. He does not do FaceTime or Skype or Zoom or a FaceBook video call or any of that. He is still back in the 80s, and refuses to budge. One wonders what hope there is for such an obstinate soul in these times. Surely they are handy and useful devices, if, for example, there were an accident or an emergency and one was not at home. "Oi don't need vaat bloody technology rubbish!" ('Red sky at night: get orff moi land!). Mmmmnnn yes, quite. One should imagine that just like I have had to, through necessity, Stalin will have to learn to adapt, lest he be left behind in this fast paced brave new world. This is not 1986 any more: it's 2022.
Max.
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