Free Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart Page A

dates . . .
    * spits tea out again * Sorry. Could we perhaps maybe talk about the whole dating/husband issue at a later (pun coming) date. (Good one, Hart, good one.)
    Well, MDRC, I hope that if you work in an office in a stimulating but junior role (or even if you’re the CEO, dammit), then I’ve given you some ideas for how best to pass your time. If you’ve any suggestions for other ways to have good, clean fun in an office environment, then please do page or email me (remembering to cc in all staff, trustees and offices in England, Wales and Scotland). Kindest regards, M Hart, Office Manager.
    Hang on . . .
    Do you mind? I’ve just brought the chapter to a rather magnificent close –
    You never explained the email thing. Did you mean post? Because if so, how could you accidentally post something to lots of people? Surely you’d notice that you were doing it as you put the notes in all the envelopes and licked the hundreds of stamps. Unless you did it in your sleep . . .
    Oh, dear. Well, email is . . . goodness. Email is . . . No. I think we’ll need to have a separate chapter on this.
    MDRC, please turn the page, and give yourself a round of applause for doing so (although I appreciate you can’t do both at once, so you’ll have to turn the page, put the book down, then applaud – but please do your best). And off we trot into the next chapter where we shall discuss . . . Technology. Exciting, isn’t it?

5
Technology
    O ne thing that has most definitely changed since I was eighteen, apart from the fact that I can’t now wave without a flap of bingo-wing arm-flesh hitting me in the eye, or the fact that I can’t freely sneeze or trampoline without the risk of doing a bit of wee, or my inability to receive an evening invitation without exclaiming, ‘Oh, no can do. There’s a
Morse
marathon on telly that night, are you mad?’ or . . . no, I should stop, I’m depressing myself. And what’s that I hear you say? ‘Enough of this bingo-wing wee talk, Miranda. The title suggested that this was to be a chapter about Technology, not the indignities of the ageing process. So hop to it.’ Fair enough, MDRC, fair enough. My point was to be this – that what has most definitely changed since I was a young ’un is, of course, the marvellous, mysterious world of Technology.
    It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, to think of the unequivocally wonderful and life-affirming changes that have come about as the result of technological progress? How strange to think that at nineteen, I headed to Australia for five months, just me and Clare-Bear, without even a mobile phone for company –
    What do you mean? Why would you take the portable phone with you?
    What?
    Well, I presume by ‘mobile phone’ you meant portable phone? You know, the cordless one that Mum has? That is AMAZE-BALLS. Yesterday, I talked to Clare-Bear for an hour on my own in my room and walked about when talking, too. Didn’t have to sit by where the phone’s plugged in with Mum listening to our conversation about who Clare-Bear snogged the night before. It’s so cool.
    Right . . . No, I meant a mobile phone. It’s new to you. It’s totally mobile. You can make a call from anywhere.
    You mean I could be right at the end of the garden, and still make a call? Because Mum’s cuts out when you’re just outside the kitchen. It goes ‘Pfffffhhht’ and stops.
    You could be absolutely anywhere and still make a call. You could be at the top of Ben Nevis, the Australian Outback, anywhere. It’s a mobile phone.
Mobile
.
    Don’t be stupid! Where’s it plugged in?
    It’s a MOBILE! IT HAS BATTERIES AND DOESN’T HAVE TO BE PLUGGED IN! IT’S
MOBILE
. YOU TAKE IT WITH YOU. IT’S MOBILE – YOU CAN CALL FROM ANYWHERE.
MOBILE
PHONE! And, breathe. (MDRC, I fear this chapter might test my patience. We’ll simply have to bear with our eighteen-year-old chum on this one.)
    Are you making this up?
    No. And you can send people written messages on