Hardeep Singh Kohli: Back to the cradle of my telephone hang-ups

I'VE to get a new phone. Not a fancy pants all-singing, all-dancing phone with GPRS that can X-Ray a small child and make a plate of stovies while landing a plane in fog. Not a mobile phone. No. I have to purchase a good old-fashioned electric telephone. The thing we now call a landline.

I don't know about you but I can't remember the last time I bought a phone. My dad gifted me one last year; no doubt a wee dig that his errant Prodigal son doesn't make like ET and "phone home". It was a cordless phone, one with a cradle-type base thingy that re-charges while it waits to ring. It's effectively a mobile phone in so far as it gets as easily lost down the side of the sofa and needs to be rung in order to locate which room it was put down in last. We have to phone ourselves to find our phones. Aren't we fascinating?

All this thought and talk of phones brought some beautiful memories flooding back. Remember when we only had a single phone in the house? Ours was a grey Trimphone, that almost elegant Seventies designed homage to plastic that made a gentle and soothing ringing sound. We eventually got an upstairs phone when my father realised that it took him seven rings to hurdle downstairs at three in the morning when family called from abroad; they only allowed six rings before hanging up, leaving the big fella pyjama-ed in the hallway with a dead phone in his hand.

The fact that the phone was plugged to the wall altered the way conversations were constructed. When Diane McElroy called I was forced to employ coded phrases in the hallway as family passed and hovered, eager to eavesdrop. This occurred while I tried to wrangle the phone cable under the door into the front room, where technically we were not allowed – it was for 'best'. The code would be dropped and Diane's secrets and my lies were revealed.

There were then those phone box conversations. Technically speaking these were not mere chats. These were tracts, treatises, theses mostly proffered by my best mate Jamie Kelly pertaining to his life's work at that point which was to snare the Celtic charms of the unsnareable Jacqueline Sharkey. Jamie would plan with me the narrative arc of phone conversations he intended to have with Jacqueline.

So frustrated became my father with my phone use/abuse he decided to put a separate line in solely for my use, in the hope that I might be shamed into curtailing my habit and I might free up the family phone. Could he have been more mistaken?

I had my dedicated hotline to gossip and chat. My own private telephone. And it was bright red. This honeymoon period lasted one quarter, until the phone bill arrived and my skelped arse matched the colour of the aforementioned instrument.

Today the landline is languishing in a world of mobile, PDA communication connectivity. While our streets, trains and restaurants are full of telephonic communication and instant access, we seem to have forgotten how to think before we speak. We no longer plan and plot conversations, rehearse and react to our lines. Talk, and the art of conversation has become diluted in an ocean of chat, meaningless noise, useless information. And the inverse proportionality of the noise of those emptiest of vessels couldn't be in starker contrast to the measured modulation of my childhood. There is no feeling of anticipation today akin to waiting for mum to get off the phone to Malkit Aunty in London, me being absolutely convinced that the girl of my dreams, Elisabeth Hill, was sitting in Milngavie, receiver in hand, waiting for the line to free. Of course she wasn't. That was the beauty of controlled telephony. It allowed me to dream. Nowadays Elisabeth still doesn't call but I know it's cos she disnae fancy me. My phone is rarely engaged.

Suit's so bright, you've gotta wear shades

It would appear that after a number of false starts, and the snow on Easter Sunday, summer might just be upon us. With this in mind, I have ventured forth and instructed the lovely Mister Nick Oliver to tailor me a new suit to reflect the on-coming sun, the longer days and the plethora of roses on offer. There are a handful of colours that truly lend themselves to the notion of the summer suit. The stone hues, creams and the like are fine, but are not best complimented by the darker skin my Indian heritage has gifted me. And none of them seem to go well with my favourite summer turban, a little lilac number. Therefore I found myself hampered and limited till Dr Nick (for he is a doctor of suiting) took from his case a swatch of the finest white corduroy. I gasped. White. And corduroy. Either one might be too much, together how can they ever work? But fortune favours the brave. There is much to recommend the white suit. Instant suave elegance, a quality I lack entirely and white poses no problem in the "match-with-my-turban" conundrum. I await a mid-May delivery when I shall become the man in the white suit (and lilac turban).

Gunner's salute to field of shattered dreams

Machu Picchu. The Taj Mahal. The Great Wall of China. The Big Wheel in Falkirk. All great places to visit, altars to human endeavour, gathering places, institutions rooted in our past offering through-lines to our future. May I add to that list? Anfield. Oh yes. The home of Liverpool Football Club. Now I realise that this may be a tad controversial, the addition of a rickety football stadium alongside such great erections, such historical edifices. I would not be so bold to make such an addition had I not ventured to Anfield myself on Tuesday night last week. As an Arsenal fan, having to endure the game from within the bosom of the Liverpool fans, it was not the most rewarding of outcomes. But notwithstanding my gut-wrenching, sick-making disappointment of an ignominious defeat, the place is astonishing. I have been to a few football grounds in my life, but never have I witnessed such euphoria, such a coming together of human kind. Anfield is old; it has none of the modern technology of the state-of-the-art stadia of today. But what it lacks in modernity it more than makes up for in the human experience. Forty thousand fans with their red scarves held above their heads, coming together in communion to sing 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. Days later, the thought still reminds me that I have hairs on the back of my neck.