I discovered recently that I am getting old. Not because of aching knees, grey hair, forgetting why I walked into a room, or making strange noises whenever I get out of a chair. No, the evidence came from my grandson.

We were doing something together and I asked him to hang up the phone.

He looked at me.

“Where?”

There are moments in life when the generation gap does not merely appear. It opens beneath your feet like the Grand Canyon.

Of course, he was perfectly correct. You cannot hang up a mobile phone. There is no receiver, no cradle and certainly no hook. Yet those of us of a certain vintage continue happily telling people to hang up, dial numbers and give us a ring, despite the fact that none of these actions bear much resemblance to what we actually do.

It reminded me of another recent encounter with my grandsons. We were helping out at Victorious and I was being nagged about something. Eventually I told one of them that he was sounding like a broken record.

I received the look.

It was the particular look a younger person gives an older relative when they are not entirely sure whether they have heard an ancient expression or are witnessing the early stages of mental decline.

Then it occurred to me that he probably had no idea what I meant. Why should he? A broken or scratched record getting stuck in the same groove and repeating itself endlessly was once an instantly recognisable experience. Today it requires an explanatory footnote.

Apparently I now speak a dialect called Old Person English, a language built around telephones attached to walls, records, typewriters, carbon paper, printing presses, film reels and technologies that disappeared years ago.

So, for the benefit of my grandchildren, here is a short translation guide to some of the expressions we continue to use despite the technology behind them having vanished.

Hang up the phone — There is nothing to hang up.

Dial a number — There has not been a dial involved for decades.

Pick up the receiver — First find a receiver.

Give me a ring — No jewellery is required.

Get off the line — What line?

Sounds like a broken record — Requires a short lecture on vinyl records, scratches and grooves before the insult can be properly appreciated.

Rewind it — Nothing is actually being wound.

Fast forward — See above.

Tape it — There is no tape involved.

Don’t touch that dial — Good luck finding one.

Stay tuned — Nobody is tuning anything.

Tune in — Ditto.

Roll down the car window — What we actually mean is press the button.

Film it — There is probably no film anywhere in the device.

Footage — There are no feet of film either.

The cutting room floor — Now presumably the deleted files folder.

CC me — Carbon copies without carbon paper.

Cut and paste — No scissors and, disappointingly, no paste.

Put pen to paper — Open Word.

Back to the drawing board — Open another program.

Hot off the press — Often used for something that has never been anywhere near a printing press.

Get your wires crossed — Frequently said while using a wireless device.

On the same wavelength — No radio tuning required.

Burning the midnight oil — Electricity has made this considerably safer.

The penny dropped — Particularly impressive in Australia considering the penny disappeared in 1966.

Clockwise — Perfectly obvious until you meet someone who has grown up looking only at digital clocks.

Turn over the record — Once an essential part of listening to an album rather than an obscure instruction from an elderly relative.

Drop the needle — Vinyl enthusiasts may be keeping this one alive.

Put the pedal to the metal — Still understood, although increasingly threatened by cruise control, electric vehicles and eventually cars that do the driving for us.

Hold your horses — Usually said by people who own no horses.

Put the cart before the horse — Requires familiarity with two pieces of transport technology that most people have never used.

Close, but no cigar — Apparently there was once a time when narrowly succeeding might reasonably have resulted in tobacco.

Roll the credits — Assuming the streaming service does not minimise them and immediately try to start the next episode.

The strange thing is that none of us thinks twice about these expressions. We inherit them, use them and pass them along long after the objects that created them have disappeared. Language, it seems, is considerably more reluctant to throw things away than technology is.

Which means I shall continue to dial numbers, hang up phones, roll down windows, stay tuned, sound like a broken record, get my wires crossed and wait for the penny to drop.

My grandsons can continue looking at me strangely.

And if they do not understand something I say, they can always look it up.

Just don’t tell them to look it up in the phone book.

Thanks again to “Chattie” for help with the pics.