It’s a small thing, but very frustrating all the same.

“Hello ... can you hear me?”

“A feck! Are you gone?”

“Damn it! I think you are gone.”

“Hold on ‘til I move over here. Now, hello, hello?”

Ah yes, mobile phone coverage. I remember when mobile phones first came out and there were areas you couldn’t make or take a call. Or you’d have to stand on a mound at the back of the house. And then we moved away from the old 088 analogue numbers to 087 and it was a bit of a revolution. Remember that? That was in the mid-1990s. We were all getting mobile phones and having them put into our cars, with aerials on the roof.

Meanwhile, every Tom, Dick and Harriett were walking around with a phone. As far as coverage was concerned, it improved. Then it stalled.

A friend of mine, who runs his own business and must be on the road every day taking calls from customers and potential customers, rang me last week from his car. We broke up. So then he rang me from the office. And he started to give out yards about trying to run a business while driving and taking calls and the calls dropping. It is a consequence of where he lives. True, it’s better living in Dublin in situations like this. Like hailing a taxi outside the pub – we know no different and we have our comforts.

But he is at the end of his tether, trying to get on with a young business. Nine times out of 10 when we ring each other all is fine and dandy for a minute or two, and then, bang, he splutters and then he is gone.

He says he has to avoid certain routes to ensure good coverage and run the risk of missing an appointment just to take a call. As Adele rhetorically asks: “Hello? Can you hear me?”

I know nothing about technology and yet the process by which you hear me every Saturday morning on the radio depends on aerials and cables and all that stuff, which I leave to the experts. I just talk away and hope people can hear me. Did you ever notice on any radio programme whenever a line goes down, the inevitable default intervention from the diplomatic presenter, mainly sports, always begins with the words: “Oh, we seem to...”

Joe Duffy says it as it is when the line goes all spluttery. “That line is terrible.” Yes, it can be very frustrating on a programme like Liveline in 2017.

As I said, I know nothing about why you can only get one or two bars here and five there. But you would think in the modern digital age that this would be a problem overcome, no?

You are gone very quiet. Do you agree?

Hello?

Are you gone?

Wait a minute... can you hear me now?

Ah damn it, you’re gone. CL

Banned lyrics

I remember when a band called Frankie Goes to Hollywood had a song Relax and it was banned. I think it was because it was seen as suggestive. There was a line in it saying: “Relax, don’t do it, when you want to go to it.”

I was in my early teens and didn’t really understand, but there was a furore. Imagine if the man that banned that song only about 30 years ago was around now listening to the songs on the radio that my pair sing along to word for word. “I’m feeling sexual.”

We would have no songs to play on the radio.