In the Yorkshire seaside town of Whitby last week, I looked round St Mary’s Church – a spectacular number in a style Osbert Lancaster would call Cliffside-Norman-Gothic-Georgian-Dracula. The Transylvanian count was very fond of the graveyard, crammed as it is with juicy corpses and comfy coffins. As I walked through the church porch, I heard the unmistakable noise of someone on a mobile phone. I was immediately plunged into a deep rage. Is nowhere sacred? Then I walked into the narthex to see a distinguished-looking lady at the church souvenir stall, selling guides and cards. She was in fact on a landline and was making an order for something the stall had run out of. My rage immediately disappeared because a) she looked so decent; b) she was on a landline; c) she was working on behalf of the church. Why would I have been so much crosser with a tourist on a mobile, even though the noise level would have been identical? Because it would have been somehow sacrilegious. The lady on the landline was working for the church; someone making idle chitchat on a mobile is working against its spirit.