And this was delivered to my door today. It’s a phone book. More than that, it’s the last-ever phone book.

Go back a few years, and the phone book was a massive A4 tome that landed with a thud each year. A good inch or more thick, its pages held the name, address and phone number of all phone subscribers who didn’t opt out – who hadn’t “gone ex-directory”. As well as private subscribers, it was somewhere to go to find business – although the separately-delivered Yellow Pages was categorised by the type of business so was more helpful in that respect.

I guess the internet has put paid to those publications. When did I last use think of using a phone book to find a number? Maybe around the year 2,000 or so? To be honest I was surprised it was still being delivered!

Maybe I should keep the book safe somewhere – I could show it to any grandkids that come along, and in a hundred years or so they could sell it as a historical curiosity!