Ring ring.

The phone gives up.

Not the once whizz bang and now out of date mobile phone, but the home phone. The landline. It won’t charge anymore, its screen acts as if it doesn’t have a roll to play at all. I fiddle with it. I remove the masking tape I used to put it together again last year, when I dropped it. I clean things. I jiggle it, I wiggle it, I’m gentle and I’m firm.

Nothing works.

So I’m at one of those moments when I wonder if it’s worth trying to get it fixed, or whether I should just get another one. Living, as I do, in an era where nothing’s built to last or made to last or expected to last.

I try to remember how long I’ve had it because it will make me feel better if it’s a reasonably long time. But I can’t quite date it, and, anyway, what’s a reasonably long time anymore? How long is long enough?

On my way home the other day I stop by a store that, amongst the computers and ipads and laptops and docks and speakers and cords and mobile phones, sells phones for landlines. There’s a relatively small display, but nonetheless an addling choice. A step-ladder in front of the display enables me to reach the top shelf.

And they are so cheap. Well, you can spend a fortune if it makes you feel better, but you can spend so much less and come away with a phone that will probably last just as long. Which won’t be all that long at all. And do the work required.

I want a phone that’s simple to use. I want an answering machine in it. I find myself testing the weight of the handsets, imagining a lengthy call and my comfort zone.

Finally – and it takes a while – someone gets someone to help me. In the seconds after my “this is what I want” spiel we have a short list. No, no, I say when she asks if I want two handsets. But then she has a double set, end of range, only one left and oh so cheap phone offer. Batteries included. Will last for life, she says, perhaps divining a short one left to me.

I am no longer just looking. I am purchasing. I am taking my new phone(s) home.

I set the handsets to charge and begin the onerous task of reading the handbook. Dearest lord, why is it almost indecipherable?  Each simple task requires such a lengthy spell of button pushing. Of finding the symbols on the page on the phone.

But! All by myself I realise that instead of the two pages of instructions on how to leave a greeting for messages, there’s two simple buttons on the answering machine bit of handset number one. One to record a message and one to check the recording.

Welcome to one of the worst jobs of the modern era.

Recording the message.

It’s the replay that really does me in. Once I’ve decided how to fill the space – the words to say it – I have to endure the torture of hearing my own voice back over. And over, and over, and over. Do I sound like that? How can people bear it? Ach, awful. Oh my, the way I drag that number out. The emphasis there, the rush there, the trip over there.

I know, I know. It’s only a message for an answering machine. There are much worse things that can befall a life than listening to yourself on playback. It’s definitely, absolutely and disgracefully a first world problem.

I stop the recording. Not because I’m happy with what I’ve got but because I’m sick of it. It’s late now, I’m tired, and I’m starting to slur like a drunk. Who cares anyway? If people put up with that voice in person, they won’t even notice a recorded version.

So that’s Thursday done then. A phone for the scrap heap. A new phone installed. A second totally unnecessary handset.

And the opportunity to cross voice-overs from my list of possible employment options.