Dear LPG, 

I know it was posted a while ago now, but what GF had to say about being in contact with something electronic stuck in your ear reminded me that there is another aspect of hands-free worth talking about.

Time always seems to be at a premium when it comes to those long telephone chats that we cherish as we get older; this rings true, especially for the busy young ones who still have the mental capacity to multitask. But how do you know when the person on the other end of the phone is doing something else and talking to you? 

I pride myself on being able to hear when the person at the opposite end of the line has a multitasking mouth. A sentence spoken while some serious mastication of one of the three main meals of the day is in progress cannot be hidden from the average ear. There is a definite art to working out how to time the slurp of a drink (hot or cold) so that the other contributor of your conversation is talking while you quietly get it down.

I have a close friend that I phone while she puts me on speaker phone and chooses her clothes and make-up, applies them and generally gets ready for the day, which may or may not include a trip to the loo. Those phones that eliminate background noise are excellent these days.

Then there are the phone calls which are conducted during purposeful multitasks. My telephone earpiece allows me to talk to my housebound friend in the middle of the supermarket. If I cannot find exactly what I promised to get her in the shops, I can tell her all about the alternative options, and she can make an informed choice about what she would rather I buy for her.

Perhaps as we get older, we are the ones who are most able to use our mind’s eye to full advantage because our childhood imaginations were not as full of the television and computer images that make it a little less necessary to work at that these days. It is also a fact that many older people often appreciate a long-lasting phone call because it is one way of helping a potentially lonely day to have structure. When I talk to my son, who is nearly always multitasking when he phones me, I sometimes feel guilty enough to ask, ‘Am I stopping you from doing something else while we are talking?’

There are a few older, more isolated neighbours that I try to keep in telephone contact with, and I can tell when they don’t want the call to end. I sometimes find it challenging to keep one of those conversations going, the kind of telephone call which can become laboured for you but is vital for the person you are talking to.

But I have learned that the trip around the shops with my friend in my ear can also be a conversation I have with her. At the same time, she gets a blow-by-blow description of what I am doing in the garden or what bit of the house I am cleaning, It all seems pretty mundane to me but it stretches the family gossip and a chat about what was on television the previous evening can make my task seem faster too.. At the same time, it helps me to share what I see or what I am doing as well as concentrate and keep my focus, and I know from her feedback she appreciates all the things that are pretty mundane to me when I talk about them to her.  

I strongly advise multitasking and telling someone on the other end of the phone what you are doing as the perfect way to pass a portion of each day (within reason)!

LF, Croydon