We live in a country where it's important to have your eccentricities. Unless you can lay claim to a preference for vacuuming in the nude or stepping on all the cracks in the pavement, you're considered terribly boring and vacuous. Oddly enough, this urge to appear slightly barmy is most often displayed by young people rather than the old, who are often naturally adept at being slightly batty but don't seem to rate it all that highly as a virtue.
Young folk, on the other hand, find it terribly important to have little foibles that mark them out from the rank and file. Wearing the odd nose ring, professing to think the Kinder Bueno ads are actually very well-made or liking Aqua, are all very respectable ways of appearing terribly interesting but without really besmirching your inherent conformity. They are comforting little signifiers to your peers which say: "I'm mad, me. But I'm not really mad. I've got a very good job actually."
My particular eccentricity of choice has stood me in good stead for quite a while now, but I have a feeling the time has come for me to get with the programme and bid it goodbye. Yes, indeed, I think it's time to get a mobile phone.
Now you might not think that non-possession of a mobile was a particularly good indicator of oddness, and indeed, I didn't really think it was myself. In fact, if I`m being quite candid, I'll admit that it wasn't an intentional eccentricity at all. It happened quite by accident.
When mobile phones first moved out of the realms of Inspector Gadget-style invention and into the real world, they were very much the tool of the seriously busy exec. Big chunky things that bore more than a passing resemblance to industrial staplers, there was a law that said you couldn't own one unless you were already in a committed relationship with a briefcase, an Audi and the Financial Times.
They terrified me, to be quite honest - and, if the truth be told, they still do. I might have managed to get myself a job, eat breakfast and even pay bills on time, but no way do I feel grown up enough to own a mobile phone. From asking around, I've learned that this "grown-up-ness deficiency" is a common enough phenomenon, although everyone seems to fixate on different things from owning a dog to eating prunes. One self-employed friend even insists he doesn't feel grown-up enough to pay taxes, a rather money-saving hang-up.
Of course, these days, it's blatantly obvious that grown-up-ness is not a prerequisite for owning a mobile phone. In fact, as so many of them are bright pink or covered in sunflowers, I would think that solemn maturity might actually be a disadvantage. Certainly everybody at university owns one, teenagers wouldn't discuss their love lives on anything else and many school teachers, I believe, now have to start the day with an Aer Lingus style announcement: "Pupils are reminded not to use their mobile phones for the duration of the class as the signal may interfere with the thought processes of the pilot, sorry teacher and result in detention."
So, once I couldn't use immaturity as an excuse, I started to try a few others for size. Of course, the trendiest excuse for not having a mobile these days (short of having a PA to carry one for you) is to declare that you're worried about the waves curdling your brain. A young designer I met at a party recently told me about a test in which an egg was placed between two mobile phones which were made to call each other constantly and damned if the old egg didn't cook beautifully in 20 minutes. Seeing as a good old-fashioned sauce pan takes only three and a half minutes, I couldn't really see the point but everybody else looked horrified and surreptitiously unhooked their mobile-cum-egg poacher from where it was nestling beside their uncooked kidneys.
Despite brain-boiling fears, mobiles are incredibly popular things to have. And, when you're a freelance journalist, they are not regarded as popular, but rather a limb of slightly more importance than say, your right arm. So, you can imagine the satisfying gasps of amazement and shock when I'm asked for my mobile number and reply insouciantly that I don't actually have one.
If people are kind or easily impressed, they don't say anything, but just look on me and my no-mobile phone eccentricity with a mixture of awe and horror. The more inquisitive (and, I believe, the more acquisitive, as people are always looking for foibles to steal) usually quiz me at length about how I manage and more importantly why I'm doing this crazy thing.
I usually trot out something up-to-the-minute about brain-curdling (including the egg incident if pressed) but I also ring the changes by explaining I don't want the pressure of having to ensure my conversations are really interesting in public places or that I wake up at night sweating about the thought of my mobile going off during a funeral.
Yes, indeed, it's been a very consistent and rewarding eccentricity to have but, as I say, something happened to make me think that it's time to find a new one. Last weekend I met some people and the subject of my non-mobile toting ways came up. As usual, I sat back to savour the effect but imagine my horror when somebody piped up "My God, how trendy of you, Louise, no mobile phone."
It had to happen - my phobia has gone mainstream - but it's left me in the market for a mobile phone and a new eccentricity. So, if anybody has a good deal or a foible they've outgrown, please let me know.