Life Is So Convenient These Days

[hc4361]

Just received my car tax reminder through the post, taxed it online in under 5 minutes.

Big difference from just a few years ago when I had to travel to a main post office and stand in a long, long queue.

[ummmm]

Convenience has made me lazy.

[bhg481]

I go back even further than that Hoppy - I go back to the days when only rich/business people had phones, so there were no phone numbers to remember.

[ummmm]

I used to live in a pub so we had a payphone downstairs. I wasn't allowed to use the upstairs phone and to go to the bar and pay to use it!!

There used to be two red phone boxes outside which were cheaper than the pub phone. My friends used to find it funny that I was calling from a phone box :-)

[hc4361]

I grew up without a telephone and didn't know anyone who had one. I can remember the number I first called though - my sister's phone when she married and left home 35 years ago

[trt]

When I was young, our phone was a party-line, and you had to keep checking if somebody else was using it, can you imagine that today?

[hc4361]

I remember that, trt

I don't like using the phone even now. I certainly can't have long chats on the telephone, it doesn't seem natural to me.

[hc4361]

I've just checked and party lines weren't dispensed with until the early 80s. Telephony has come a long way in a very short time

[vulcan42]

I've come to the conclusion that I am a part time grumpy Luddite as I consider progress is just exchanging one nuisance for another. :o)

[jno]

we had a phone from the time I was born. Not in the UK, of course. Had to wait months to get one here, and that was in the 70s - only got one because my boss wrote to the PO saying what an important person I was and had to be on call (not really true).

And people used to laugh at stories that it took Berliners years of waiting, as if just waiting months was fine.

[andy-hughes]

Hopkirk - //Do you remember the days when you used to know all your friends phone numbers, because no one had phones with memories or speed dial? //

I do, I can still rattle off the home numbers of friends I haven't been in touch with for forty years!

[Bazile]

Life will be even more convenient , when the car actually drives, without having to pay this tax

[hc4361]

A telephone in the home was expensive in the 70s and 80s - far more expensive in real terms than today.

I remember people having special money boxes next to the phone so that neighbours using their phone could pay