This could become

addictive. I can see myself living so as to have something interesting to tell myself later. Every tiny thought could become saturated with significance, every action of earth-moving importance.

I think it may have started already . . .

James (who lives round the corner) bounced in on Saturday afternoon wanting to know whether I'd got his text yet.

No I haven't. Was it important?
Not really but I'm sorry you haven't got it. Is your phone switched on?

My phone is on the top of the microwave in the kitchen. It is indeed on. I have neither messages nor a signal so we go outside to see if we can get one in the garden. James holds the phone up to the sky, which is obviously where the signal lives (and, for all I know, where all the undelivered messages hover while they're waiting for one).

Any luck?

James peers hopefully at the phone.

Nah. What noise do you get when a text comes?
Sort of a beep thing, I think.

There are no beeps. It is bitterly cold, so we take the phone indoors to the warm. It sits on the table, silently. James, on the sofa opposite, fidgets.

Has it still not come?
No.
I suppose I could send it again . . . well I could if I hadn't deleted all my sent messages. Shit. I'll have to write it again.
James, you're sitting four feet away from me. Couldn't you just tell me what it said?

Apparently this is not a viable option.

Then the phone rings. Oooo, I exclaim. I have a friend! No you haven't, says James. That's just me checking your phone's working.

By 9pm the text still hasn't come. James has been and gone and been and gone again, anxiously. Ben and Linda arrive and James comes back. Joe surfaces from whichever fantasy life he's currently inhabiting and they all decide they're going to buy some alcohol and play cards. James gives me £10, which is half of the £20 I lent him weeks ago. He apologises for not having the rest yet. I say it's all right.

I am watching Casualty, which Joe hates because he says the blood's too tidy. There's a major dither because they can't play cards in here (it's warm, but Casualty's on TV and they need a table and this table is covered in half-finished knitting and bits of paper. The rest of the house is freezing) and besides James can't decide what he wants to drink and Joe can't go to the shop, which closes in an hour, until he does. Phil arrives. Aaron doesn't because he has to be up at 4.30 am to help his dad load the vans taking stuff to Ely's Sunday Market.

Eventually we play cards in the breakfast room and James tells me that he'd texted me to say sorry he and the others hadn't been round recently but he was worried I might break his legs on account of the £20 but he now had £10 so could he come later. I'd no idea I was so scary.

His text finally arrives late on Sunday afternoon, which leaves me wondering where it's been.

I imagine a helicopter like the ones that hover over Cyprus during the burning season, dumping seawater on the fires out of great tarpaulins slung underneath them. Does James's phone network, which offers free weekend calls and texts, save them all up until delivery to a particular area is considered economical? Then drop the lot in a single swamping mass?

James has a place at Cambridge University in 2009. I worry for him.