If you avoid phone calls, you're missing out. Here's why | Melanie Tait

Culturally, we're moving away from phone conversations - but they're often the best part of my day

I've taken to switching my phone's ringer on between 8.30pm and 10.30pm on a week night. It feels like a dangerous act, for someone who used to be part of the "no phone calls allowed" brigade.

There are lots of things to panic about with a phone call, chief among them being: what if we run out of things to say, and there's, God forbid, silence?