Note for American readers: for the duration of this proof I shall be referring to my cell phone as a mobile. It's a Brit thing.

Day 1:

I turned my mobile off at about 10pm on Tuesday 4 December.



By about noon the following day, I had already made a strong observation: I felt a creeping paranoia, occasionally bordering on panic, that I was missing messages. I felt like calling everyone I know just to ask if they'd left me a message. My surprisingly powerful withdrawal symptoms led me to be convinced that the entire world would choose this day to make a shatteringly important call.

Another big problem was that I was supposed to be meeting my wife, dad and father-in-law for an evening meal in Covent Garden, but I couldn't get in touch with them to make arrangements because I didn't know their numbers.

So, in a moment of weakness, I bailed. At about 4pm I turned my phone on and used it.

I noted that I had missed only one call rather than the dozens that my brain had feared.

Day 1 again:

I wrote down my wife's mobile number in order to memorize it, then I turned my mobile off at exactly 6:42pm on Wednesday 5 December. For real this time.

Another early observation: I rely on my phone to tell the time. The evening passed without me thinking about my phone until just before bedtime. I resisted the temptation to turn it back on.

Day 2:

Dammit this is difficult. Mobile phones are like a drug. My sister is coming to do Reiki for the staff in my building today, and she usually calls me to be let in. She's perfectly capable of getting in without me - I'm not always available when she arrives - but the feeling that I know I'm missing a phone call burns. It burns almost as much as not knowing I'm missing a phone call.

On the plus side, I came up with my first creative use for the pointless lump of plastic. I used it as a straightedge to rip the word "Dave" out of a newspaper so I could label my work secret santa present (which is for Dave) without using my easily-traceable handwriting.



It was our work Christmas social today. I nipped upstairs for a couple of minutes and when I came back the office was empty! If I'd been able to use my mobile, I would have called one of my teammates to find out where they'd gone. Instead I walked over to the pub and, sure enough, they were all there.

The rest of the evening was a mist of wine, beer and the kind of conversation that it is thoroughly inappropriate to have with your workmates.

Day 3:

It occurred to me that the task didn't necessarily require me to turn my phone off for the whole week. I could use it as a calculator, or a clock, or a light, or a game machine without breaking the rules of the task as long as I could resist the temptation to check my messages. I left it off though - I don't trust myself while I'm still feeling the lack so acutely.

I had to phone around a bunch of people today to organise another Christmas social (any excuse for a party), so I ended up using my work phone quite a cheeky amount. And then my mum asked me to text someone. I wondered what to tell her - that it was broken? No point in lying (also no point in trying to explain SF0 to her), so I told her I couldn't because my phone was off. Seemed to satisfy her.

Days 4 and 5:

I spent the weekend at my mum's house having a kind of pre-Christmas family celebration, and I didn't even think about my phone for a full 48 hours. We played Wii, we ate a lot, we exchanged presents, we went for a windy walk from the Brighton Marina to Palace Pier, we shared party tricks over a traditional pub lunch. Lovely.

On Sunday evening we went to the cinema (to see The Golden Compass), and I was reminded of my phone by those ads that ask you to turn your mobile off during the film. It made me realise how much the urge to use my phone had weakened.

I came up with another creative use for the phone: I used it to hammer in a loose pin on my mum's slide-out table. There's no photo documentation, but here's a reconstruction:




Unfortunately, when I got home from Brighton, the hardest test yet awaited me. My flatmate greeted me with the message that my wife (who was in Padua on business) had fallen ill and was trying to call me. Guilt loomed, and I immediately turned my phone on.

Sure enough, several messages and missed calls arrived - but fear not, my faithful readers! My torn conscience did not overwhelm me, and I resisted. I did not check the messages, and I turned the phone off again. I used the house phone to call my wife (it still feels weird to call her that - I've been calling her my girlfriend for six years - we got married this September), and I left her a message asking her to call me on the house line or at work.

It took a force of will to keep my phone turned off.

Day 6:

I felt much better after having made contact with my wife, who had consumed some dodgy Venetian fish and was finally, gradually, starting to feel better after explosively disemboguing the contents of her abdomen.

I turned my phone on again, this time to play chess while I was waiting in the Post Office queue. I played White against Chessmaster's "Apprentice" difficulty level. All was even until Black made (I think) a mistake at move 22, but being the rubbish player I am it took me another 32 moves to win.



When I got home after work, my wife called me on the house phone and I had a mini-revelation. If people really need to contact me, they will. Mobile phone or no.

Day 7:

Wow. I actually didn't think about my phone all day, until 8:37pm when I logged into SFZero and remembered about writing up this task. At which point, I turned it on.

I had intended to make a game of guessing how many messages I would have when I finally turned my phone on again, but because I had turned it on twice in the last couple of days, I had a rough idea already.

As it turns out, there were a total of 19 texts and voicemails.



6 from people with whom I have been trying to organize the Christmas social for next week (almost all of whom contacted me by other means).
3 from the wife (sounding very pathetic, poor lass).
3 from my sister (asking about Christmas plans and West End play recommendations).
2 from D who was glowing after having her first ultrasound scan.
1 from my neighbour replying to an earlier question about a stopcock.
1 from my father-in-law mocking me for my inevitable hangover after my work Christmas social on Thursday.
1 from L inviting me to the theatre (in January, so I haven't missed it).
1 from J giving me her address (I had asked her earlier so I could send her a Christmas card).
1 from a pocket.
And a partridge in a pear tree.

Has this task made me reconsider my dependence on my mobile phone? Has it made me think twice before texting someone I could call, or calling someone I could visit?

Honestly? Not really. As soon as I turned my phone back on (yesterday evening) I was using it just as often as normal. The bottom line is that it's an extremely useful tool. Used appropriately, it doesn't do anyone any harm, and it keeps us all knitted together in these days of scattered and fragmented communities. I was a late-ish adopter (my first mobile was in '99) because I was cynical about always being contactable, but on reflection I think the mobile is one of the better inventions in our crazy modern age.

So I'll be keeping my mobile on for the time being...

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I am on a nigh-impossible mission to complete every single pure-EquivalenZ task by the end of the era. Prior tasks:

- SFZero Text Updates
- Objectify a Subject
- Attachment Theory
- Bathe Electonics