Don't call me. I won't call you. Probably.

SOMEONE HAD BETTER BE DEAD.

I'm really not one for the telephone.

I know. Women are supposed to spend all their time gassing on the phone, right? Yapping away with friends they've only just seen ("What do you talk about?" stereotypical men in the lives of these stereotypical women ask). Passing idle gossip. Talking about…I don't know – cupcakes? Shoes?

I'm just not like that. I pretty much hate ringing people. Even the people I love most in my life. My parents get a call maybe once a month, if I'm being good. I never ring my siblings. I never ring my friends.

Chances are, if someone rings me on my mobile, I'll glance at the screen, note who it is, and put it back in my bag. I'll probably text later.

If the landline rings during the week, I'll pretend it's not happening. Chances are it's someone I don't want to speak to. A creditor, most likely. Or someone ignoring the fact that I'm registered with the Telephone Preference Service, trying to sell me a new kitchen or insurance. Or kitchen insurance.

If it rings at the weekend, it's probably my mother. I'll usually pick up then because I know it's my mother. And the conversation from my side will be: "Uh huh. Yeah. Yup. Yeah. Yup. Yeah. Haha. Oh really? Yeah. Good. (repeat for 30 minutes.) OK. Love you too. Hi Dad. Yeah, good. OK. Love you too. Bye." It's obviously no reflection on them; of course I love them. But when I speak to them on the phone it's out of a sense of filial duty, not a desire to reconnect. I'd rather see them in person. Of course, I can't see them in person that often – every few years or so. So I should embrace the phone. But my intolerance to Mr Graham Bell's invention gets deeper every year.

If the phone rings after about 7pm, someone had better be dead. I see that clanging ringing sound as an intrusion into the hermit-like world I enjoy when I'm at home.

If I need to cancel something, like insurance (kitchen or otherwise) or a subscription, I much prefer an email or letter. If I ring, I'm fully aware that I'll be put through to "customer retention" and have to endure someone reading a customer retention script before they'll finally let me go. I once spent half an hour on the phone to a woman in India reading a script in broken English while I begged her to just cancel my AOL subscription.

If a friend rings, I'll usually forget to listen to the voicemail for about a week. I'll happily text or email, but my favourite way to interact with my friends is in person. I never ring up for a goss and I tend not to enjoy "goss" conversations. I spend the entire time wondering when I can find an excuse to hang up.

I'm not completely phobic about the phone. I use it to make meetings, appointments and arrangements. Ask for directions. Sort out a query at work. That kind of thing. It's a useful tool. But I just don't use it to communicate.

If I want a chat with someone I care about, like a friend, I do it face to face.I love socialising and I'll talk about pretty much anything. If it's an uncomfortable issue, a complaint or something I'm not happy to talk about, I prefer to get it all into a letter or email, where I can organise my thoughts without interruption or intimidation.I like to be prepared. Have a meeting at work where we can look at spreadsheets or schedules or visual aids. I hate awkward silences. Phone calls can catch you off guard. I've been known to write down what I want to say before making a call.

I'm a regular chatterbox on social media, but there, I have control. I can work out what I want to say. I can edit myself. I'm not going to talk myself into a corner or run out of things to say. I've always been more comfortable writing than communicating in any other way. I think that's why I love the internet so much.

As far as Skype – all the awkwardness of a phone call AND the caller can see if I'm looking at my scruffiest and haven't cleaned the house? Forget it.

I love my iPhone but I hardly ever use it for phone calls. Emails, texts,music, clever and useless apps, games, social media – all brilliant. But actually using it to phone people? Hardly ever.

If a phone call has a purpose, I can deal with it. But the kind of idle chat I love in real life just doesn't translate to the phone. I can't see anyone's face. I can't deal with a pause in conversation by glancing elsewhere, or smiling, or going to the bar, or petting a dog.

I feel a neverending guilt towards my friends and family for never picking up the phone, but I think they're used to it by now. I hope so. As far as the others – the creditors, suppliers and kitchen insurance providers – they can just deal with it.

Don't call me. I'll call you. Maybe.

Image: freedigitalphotos.net

Dad and daughter day

I know not everyone's been as lucky as my siblings and me, so I'm not going to go all misty-eyed about how Fathers (generic Fathers) are brilliant. But here's a little about mine.

Dad and me way back in the summer of '69

It's Father's Day and in its honour, I dug through my disorganised boxes of photographs (which stop in about 2005, when I got a digital camera) and found the photo you can see to your right. I think it was taken at Edaville Railroad. Looking at the date stamp – August 1969 – I realise that my mother must have been about to pop with the next in the brood, my little sister, born at the beginning of September. I don't know the story, then – did Dad venture out with my two brothers and me to give Mom a break? Or was she waddling around with us in the August heat? I don't know. But I love this picture. How relaxed I look, precariously balanced on his arm. That's my Dad. I'm safe.

I remember being convinced that Dad was Mister Rogers, because at the moment Mister Rogers' Neighborhood finished, Dad would walk through the door. That kind of magic is possible when you're a kid. Off of the TV, into the living room. Especially when it's your all-powerful Dad.

I remember waiting on the doorstep for him to come home. And come home he did, at 6 on the dot, every night. He never worked late. He always came home for all of us to sit around the table for supper (eating dinner in front of the TV was strictly forbidden). First, though, he and Mom would go into their room, close the door for five minutes, and just catch up in what must have been the only quiet, private five minutes of their days.

Unusually for a man of his generation, he always helped Mom with the clearup and getting us all off to bed. I'm one of six children – this was no easy feat. If we were kicking up, he'd stand at the bottom of the stairs, threateningly snapping his belt. In all my life I don't think Dad laid a finger on any of us. I only found out as an adult that as we scattered in terror of The Belt, he and Mom were stifling their laughter downstairs.

On Saturdays, he piled us all into the Tardis-like station wagon to go to the supermarket and the library, giving my poor frazzled mother a break from looking after six children who were all close in age. Those library trips were pretty special to me, as I've already said.

He had two brothers. One of them, Robbie, was severely mentally disabled. I was slightly frightened of Robbie as a kid, because of his slurred speech, and his shaking hands (the medication they gave him for his mental illness caused Parkinson's), and just that he was different. He lived in a home but he came to visit sometimes and Dad treated him with infinite kindness, tolerance and love until Robbie passed away.

Most men of his generation just saw it as their job to bring home the bacon, but Dad's always been more than a provider for us. He and my mother set a standard of parenthood that I've seldom seen replicated. Truth be told, he's set a standard for fatherhood that I've never seen in the boyfriends and husband I had, which is one reason why I'm not a mother.

So he was more than a provider, but boy, did he provide. He somehow put six children through university and for most of us, post-grad study. With a B.A., I'm the least educated of any of my siblings. In America, with its tuition fees, that's pretty incredible. With the self-centredness of youth I just accepted this in my late teens; now I know what it must have taken.

Dad gave me a work ethic. I started babysitting at the age of 13 and immediately began putting money aside to save up for a bike – I was only earning a dollar an hour, so it took a while, and eventually Dad rewarded me for understanding the principle of working and saving by paying off the balance for my beautiful shiny blue bicycle. I hadn't asked for it or expected it, and I understood why it was a reward. It was one of the proudest moments of my young life.

As soon as I was 16, I was frogmarched down to the local shopping mall to get a part-time job. And I've held jobs ever since, throughout school and university as well as in adult life – except, of course, when I'm “between jobs” as I am now, due to either redundancy or fixed-term contracts. I know how much it distresses him when I'm not working, and the work ethic he's given me drives me to jobhunt with pigheaded determination and a reluctance to give up.

Of course as I grew up I began to see his annoying habits, his flaws, his human frailties and his vulnerabilities. He's set in his ways. He's conservative. He still treats me like I'm a 13 year old kid and this triggers a strange reaction where, um, I act like a 13 year old kid.

And he's already survived cancer twice – the latest, quite recently. Because I only go home every few years, each time I see him he looks more like the old man that my head knows he is but my heart won't accept. When he asks me to go to Mass, or say a prayer, I say I will. I don't believe in God or religion or the power of prayer, but I say it as a comfort to him. It's the least I can do for him.

I can be pretty rubbish sometimes about phoning my parents, or remembering important dates. I'm not a very demonstrative person so I don't gush with love on the phone; a quick and slightly embarrassed “Love ya” to Dad before he hands me back to Mom is as far as it goes. I won't send Dad a link to this because I have other blogposts on here with rude words in them that he wouldn't approve of. I'm sure, though, that he still remembers the girl in pigtails waiting eagerly on the doorstep for his return.

Dry Kindling

I'm not what you'd call an early adopter of new technology and gadgets.

CD players, DVD players, MP3 players, smartphones…whatever the gadget, I get one (what seems like) years after everyone's started talking about them, and usually right before something newer, faster and sleeker comes onto the market to replace it. I was reluctant to join Facebook, then got addicted; then I was reluctant to join Twitter, and got addicted to that too.

It's not that I'm a Luddite. I like whizzy, shiny new things. Once I come round to something, I usually embrace it. OK, the mini-disc was a mistake, but generally speaking, I grow to love the new things. I love the internet. I'm devoted to my smartphone, which is one of my favourite toys, and years after the rest of the developed world, am an enthusiastic downloader of music.

I get there, eventually. I'm not afraid. Just a bit slow.

There's one bit of kit I'm not sure I'll ever grow to love, though, and that's e-readers, such as the massively popular Kindle.

Stick it in your e-book, Grandma.

Yeah, I've heard people rave about them. I've heard all the advantages of them, and I can see why they'd be handy. I get all the reasons. I just can't fall in love with the concept, though.

I have what I can only describe as an emotional connection to books. I have done since I first started to learn to read, at the age of 3 or so. Story time was always special.

One of the abiding memories of my childhood is when – mostly to get us out of my mother's hair for a precious few hours – my dad piled my siblings and me into the station wagon every Saturday to go to the public library. He carried a empty bag so large that it would leave Santa envious, and we'd duly fill it with storybooks.

I remember those trips with all my senses and many (always positive) emotions. The slightly musty scent of the old building that housed the library, and the creak of its stairs. The feel of the books in my hands and the paper between my fingers. The anticipation when I cracked open a book I'd pulled off the shelf and saw the words and pictures within, and the thrill when I made the decision and a book went into the sack. The warm fondness for books re-read constantly, and the excitement of the books I was going to read for the first time. The delighted greetings of the librarians, who knew us well and marvelled at our voracious appetite for stories. I can even recall the layout of the rooms. I felt like I had a whole world at my feet when we walked into the library.

Another fond memory from my childhood is the book order. I can't remember how often, but in elementary school we were given the opportunity to put in a mail order for books. A few weeks later, to my immense excitement, a fresh stack of paperbacks JUST FOR ME would arrive on my desk.

This connection to books, tied up in emotions and senses, has stayed with me into adulthood. I've never thrown away or given away a book. I'm reluctant to lend books, and turn down offers to borrow someone else's. I don't like being given books as gifts – not because I'm an ingrate, but because the whole process of choosing my next read is so enjoyable. I still feel the same thrill in a bookshop or when a parcel from Amazon lands on my doorstep as I felt as a child at the library or when a book order arrived at my school desk.

I love picking up a book from my ‘to read’ pile and feeling its heft, the embossed cover, the pages. The smell of them, whether that smell is fresh print or the mustiness of a secondhand book. Flipping through the preliminary pages, running my thumb against the pages across the side of the book. It's all done with the same appetite and anticipation that I'd feel sitting down to a great meal.

I'm going to the Hay Festival this coming weekend and one of the greatest delights of the festival is wandering through the town's many dusty, piled-high bookshops. The rush of anticipation and the rush on my senses are the same as they were in the childhood experiences that made me fall in love in the first place.

I just can't imagine feeling the same about a computer in my hand,as much as I love computers. Sure, a Kindle can hold a gazillion titles, and it weighs less than a book, and you can read it in the dark, yadah yadah yadah. I can see that. Maybe I'm weird for feeling such a sensory and emotional pull towards books. Maybe my middle age is making me old fashioned; maybe I'm just an old fart. But I may never get around to adopting this latest bit of kit. Anyway it would look lonely on my bookshelf.

Image ©Maggie Smith on freedigitalphotos.net