And so it came to pass: As my year headed from mundane to catastrophic software failure, I found myself in a pub in St Albans, being a nomophobe (addicted to the mobile phone) as my wife visited the latrines, until the phone went blank, never to live again. I sat nonplussed and, although my life didn’t flash before me, a mild panic washed over me: What if there’s an emergency (there rarely is), or an important email is about to hit my inbox on a Saturday evening (it never does), and, more importantly, how many points did my captain, Haaland, rack up on the fantasy league app for me this week?

To cut a long, and ultimately dull story short, I spent two hours on my wife’s phone the other day to my network provider as I reiterated 15 times that I had not dropped said phone into a sink or toilet, eaten it, or dunked it in a muddy puddle. Eventually they agreed to an ‘investigation,’ and I found myself contemplating being phoneless for a week.

But oh, what a revelation it proved to be! Worried how I would survive, despite doing just that until my mid-20s before first using a mobile phone, I quickly came to embrace the solitude it gave me. On the Monday night I actually watched an entire football game, for the first time in years, without scores of checks each time the ball and chain of telephony called me hither. I could judge who had had a good game, was fully focused and, for the first time ever, I read a book whilst cycling on the shed turbo trainer, in lieu of the clamour for my attention from Netflix, Amazon, or a random funny cat video.

I went to work without a phone, the strangest part of which was the constant checking my pockets for my handpiece until the realisation dawned that there was not one on my person. I could not hook up the prime music app and instead consoled myself with some radio and an interesting, albeit middle aged, conversation on LBC concerning topics as diverse as Israel and transgender changing rooms.

In the mornings I paid attention to GMTV with a cup of tea as opposed to staring aimlessly at the phone screen to see if the world had shifted on its axis via the latest revelations from folk I have no interest in, see: the artist formerly known as Prince Harry, the Kardashians or Love Island nonentities.

The entire week, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, was a refreshing reset. Others showed pity when I explained I did not have a phone with one asking, ‘how am I surviving?’ as I explained a phone is a want, not a need, much to their chagrin. I found myself speaking one to one with others and getting annoyed when, mid conversation, they would check their phone, until the realisation dawned as to just how rude I have been over the previous quarter of a century.

Now fully immersed in the no-tech world, I found myself looking, and smiling, and not missing the constant distractions we allow our addiction to thrust upon us, consuming every waking hour as we check for a revelation that rarely comes like fish on a hook.

And then, as happy as I have been for many a year, I arrived home at the weekend to find a non-descript box. Opening it eagerly, expecting it to be the new Slimfast meal pack, I found a new phone and my face dropped. On auto pilot and with little reason as to why, I charged it up and loaded my apps before finding myself trapped back in the technological crack as I bemoaned my lack of willpower. Wallowing in a pit of self-obsession, I submitted, which, I’m sure, is not what Alexander Graham Bell had in mind all those years ago, when our lives were much more innocent but richer for it...

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher