This was to become an ongoing and unwelcome feature of mylife. Technology would not advance for me the way it did for others, it wouldregress.
In terms of mobile phones, it meant a downgrade was dueapproximately every couple of years. I’d already noticed that the text messageson my phone did not seem to go back any further than August 2022 which led meto conclude that that was when my upgrade must have taken place.
Finding the instruction booklet for my phone, I discoveredthat it ought to have been a relatively simple task to port my old messagesover to the new phone but, for whatever reason, I hadn’t done so.
So it came as no surprise to me one morning in August when Iwoke up to discover an older, slightly battle-scarred phone sitting on mybedside table. I’d never seen it before, so presumably I must have got rid ofit as soon as I’d got the new one.
Eager to see what secrets this older phone might be hiding,I switched it on to be confronted by the familiar PIN code unlock screen.Hoping that I’d had the sense to use the same PIN as on the other phone, Itried it, and thankfully it worked.
I’d had no end of trouble with PIN codes and passwordsalready over the past couple of years, so it was a relief not to have to gothrough all of that again. I’d only recently begun to be able to use thecashpoint.
A thorough search through some piles of untidy receipts inan old briefcase had revealed a small scrap of paper with my PIN number writtenon it. It also said, “Please memorise and destroy this strip” beneath it. Itwas a good job I hadn’t.
This phone was packed with far more information than theother one had been. My contacts list had expanded dramatically, and the textmessages now went back years. Excited at this fresh new source of information,I quickly began to scroll through them.
A few pages up from all of the usual crap was a message thatstood out like a sore thumb: it was from someone called Lauren. I could onlysee the first few words which read Hey, you, sorry I’ve not been in touchfor a couple of days, but…
Eagerly I clicked on it to read the full message:
Hey, you, sorry I’ve not been in touch for a couple of days,but I’ve kind of met someone else. Thanks for everything, it’s been fun, Laurenxx
This was the last in a string of messages, but it was theone just above it, sent three days previously which really got me excited:
I am gonna totally fuck your brains out tonight.
I scrolled through the messages. There were dozens of them, allsent over a brief period of a few days in January. My own replies were there,too, and I was quite shocked at the filth I had written back in response.
And it wasn’t just text messages. She had sent me severalpictures of herself, from her pretty cheeky face to intimate shots of herprivate parts. I felt myself getting incredibly turned on as I looked at thepictures and also a little bit like a dirty old man. This girl couldn’t havebeen any older than Stacey. How on earth had I managed to pull her?
I wasn’t going to worry about that. I was well and truly ona promise and if a girl in her twenties wanted to give herself on a plate to aman my age, who was I to question it? There was nothing illegal about it.
I needed to relieve my excitement but I also desperatelyneeded the toilet, so I headed for the bathroom first. So engrossed was I inreading her messages, that I carried on as I went for a wee, unzipping my flieswith my right hand while I carried on reading, holding the phone in my left.
Unfortunately in my growing state of excitement I completelyfailed to take aim correctly and in my haste to correct the problem lost mygrip on the phone which fell straight into the toilet.
To say this put a dampener on my excitement would have beenan understatement, particularly when I fished the phone out to discover it nolonger worked. Good job I was getting a new one, really.
In fact, maybe that was why I’d got a new one: had somethingsimilar happened in my previous timeline? It would certainly explain the lackof contacts and messages on the new phone.
Annoyed at having lost the phone just as I’d discovered thatI was about to embark on a sexual adventure with a hot, young girl, I tried toput it out of my mind for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t. My oneexperience with the escort in Milton Keynes seemed an awful long time ago now,and the fact that someone now wanted to have consensual sex with me with nomoney changing hands was thrilling.
It certainly put a spring in my step as I headed up to thepark. At last I had something to look forward to in the near future.
Thankfully, the phone was back on my bedside table when Iawoke the following morning, which enabled me to analyse Lauren’s messages inmore detail. They spanned a grand total of six days in January, so it seemedwhatever we’d had, it hadn’t lasted long.
January was still seven months away, which was atantalisingly long time to wait. I wondered if there was anything I could do tospeed things up, and after careful consideration, I decided to test the waterswith a text message.
Hi, Lauren, long time no see. Just wondered if you fanciedmeeting up for a drink some time x
The response to this message was a resounding silence. Isent it at 6pm, but no reply came that day. I suppose she could have notreplied until the next day, in which case it would have been too late for me tohave seen it, but I doubted it. Most people responded to text messages prettyquickly.
I had to resign myself to the fact that she didn’t want tosee
