Better off without a home phone

While clearly, in business, the traditional six digit number, with supplementary area dialling code, is essential, at home I'm really beginning to question how important it is now to have a home phone line.

With every person in the house having a mobile, it appears that anyone who rings me does so on my mobile and with a very few exceptions, the only people that ring my home phone are people trying to sell me all multitude of things or calls that spawn a recorded message telling me how I can clear my debts with one easy affordable loan or that I'm been selected to take part in a prize draw which could see my winning a holiday of a life time.

So has the evolution of the mobile really put the home phone-line in doubt?

Moving on from Napoleon branding us a nation of shopkeepers, have we become a country with a mobile phone collectively constantly to our ears?

All very well, and I'm certainly not inferring that BT know something we don't, but I wonder what will happen to the mobile phone industry as a whole if the experts eventually come up with conclusive proof that they are a health risk?

If and when that happens, the old land line will probably have resurgence and it will once again be an achievement to tear the local phone book in half.

AS I was driving down South Farm Road last Friday morning during that horrendous rain, it was heartening to see a group of students from Worthing High School, as I later found out, using one of their extracurricular enrichment days to help give Broadwater Cemetery some welcome restoration.

One of those moments when your faith in the future is given a welcome boost.

MORE Rivoli feedback from John Whitington, the former projectionist at the cinema who remembers the retractable roof being opened on certain nights to get rid of the cigarette smoke.

How times have changed.

And David Styles who reaffirms, as he was actually there, that the last film to be shown at the cinema before it burned down was indeed the big screen version of the radio comedy The Navy Lark.

AND finally... more information required if possible this week.

Just over a year ago, a business associate, Paul Tew, showed me a traditional cutlery canteen which was engraved with H. J. Hackney Worthing.

On further investigation, and confirmed by an entry in the local Kelly's directory of 1940, Hackney's were situated at 6 Arcade Buildings, Worthing, had the telephone number 27 and were listed as Leather goods, dealers and cutlers.

Does anyone recall when the shop closed, are any of the family still living locally?

Perhaps even more intriguing, is anyone eating their Sunday lunch this weekend with a canteen of Hackney cutlery?

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