LIKE many other households, we just had the new telephone directory delivered which proved to be quite a poignant moment.

The cover tells us that this will be the last Phone Book and seeing how few pages it has I’m not surprised. The world has changed and everyone it appears has a mobile and their own personal phone books.

Strange how you can become all nostalgic about the Phone Book though.

I’m old enough to remember when it would come through the letter box with an almighty thump. Then there’d be a second thump as the Yellow Pages was delivered.

You see kids there were two directories, one for private numbers and one for businesses.

It’s hard to believe, given today’s obsessions with data protection and privacy, that within the wafer thin pages you had names, addresses and phone numbers of virtually everyone in town.

You could, of course, choose to go ‘ex-directory’ and not have your number included but growing up, if you did that you were generally regarded as being ‘posh’ or a bit ‘too big for your boots’.

But now that’s all ending. No longer will we ‘just look it up in the Phone Book’.

In many ways, things are much more accessible but, you know what, I think I’ll miss the old Phone Book.

DAVID RUSH