THE message from Senior Son was brief but urgent. "We've got some frozen hostages. What should we do with them?"

I played it again and panicked. Hostages? Frozen? Was he involved in a shoot-out? Gang warfare? Had he strayed from the safe world of Manchester Metropolitan University too far down the road into Moss Side? And what exactly do you do for hypothermia?

I took a deep breath and rang him back.

It wasn't hostages at all. That was the fault of my utterly rubbish BT answerphone. It was frozen SAUSAGES he was asking about which, I have to say, was a bit of a relief, if also a bit of an anti-climax.

But that's the trouble with mobile phones. It gives your little ones a direct link to you any time, any where, even when they're planning their supper.

Back in the old days of phone boxes that never worked and with long queues for those who did, phoning home was a bit of a ceremony, undertaken at most once a week, involving either vast piles of sixpences and shillings (oh, those dear dead days of long ago), or soft-hearted parents who would accept a transfer charge call.

("We have a transfer charge call for you from Bristol," a telephone operator once asked my father, "Will you accept that charge?" "No." said my father. "Her mother's out and I'm going to bed." Click.

Fat lot of good that would have been if I'd been in a hostage situation, or even a sausage situation.

But on the occasions when they did pay up, it meant we had proper conversations. They told us the doings at home and we gave them highly edited accounts of what we were up to. But now...

Students ring on a whim. Not because they want to share their new lives and experiences with us. Oh no. We're more a sort of instant reference point about what to do with frozen sausages. Or how to make a cheese sauce. Or is it alright to wash his jeans with his jumper as long he puts them on a low wash?

A friend's daughter, entertaining three people for a special supper, bought some chicken pieces and then had little idea about what to do with them. At every stage of the process she rang her mum. "Right, they're sort of brown, now what do I do?" Mother ended up cooking the entire meal at a distance of 200 miles and a with a wonky signal. By the time everything was ready to serve up, she was a total wreck.

But mobiles mean they are still attached to us. Sometimes, I fear they will never learn to think for themselves.

Mind you, that's what old time policemen thought when personal radios were brought in.

"Sarge, Sarge, I've got a man throwing bricks through a shop window, what shall I do?" one recalled a young PC radioing in. The sergeant's answer was brisk, "Well for a start, get off the bloody radio!"

The young are, of course, permanently attached to their mobile phones, which means their calls are a running commentary on their lives. Senior Son rings to ask the local football results or to check a reference on the Internet, or from the pub to ask us to settle a bet. Or maybe it's just to tell us a dreadful joke.

And sometimes he rings because he doesn't know what to do with frozen sausages. But by the time I rang him back, he'd sorted that one. He'd had bacon instead. See, sometimes they CAN think for themselves...

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