Not so many years ago, I heard about a bar that offered drinkers a rather special service: the use of phone booths. Not the old-fashioned, pretty much obsolete kind with telephones in them, but sound-proof cubicles in which different sorts of ambient noise were on offer. Thus, for a modest fee, an unscrupulous punter with a mobile could call a husband/wife/boss/parent/minder and claim to be delayed in the office/on the train/on the bus/in traffic with greater conviction than if a sound of revelry by night were audible in the background. I don't know what people did if their 20 pence worth of ambient sound ran out before they finished making their phoney excuses: perhaps the quicker-witted abruptly ended the call and later claimed to have been going through a tunnel. Anyway, if the establishment in question is still in business, the booths will soon fall into disuse, with the arrival of mobile video phones. The idea fills me with horror, not so much because I like to slope off to the pub after curfew as out of vanity. No doubt I'll come round: 40 million of us have got used to the audio-only kind.

LRB 10 July 2003 | PDF Download