Planning a night out in the 1980s or early 1990s hung on one key factor; that everyone knew the time and place to meet up, remembers columnist Chris Britcher.

It sounds simple, but if one person failed to show or forgot where the rendezvous point was, an entire evening could, quite comfortably, be thrown into chaos.

Because this was an era before the mobile phone was omnipresent.

There was no WhatsApp to alert folks your train was delayed or bus was running late. No Snapchat map to see if you were, in fact, waiting at the other end of town or broken down on the M20. No Google Maps to find your way if unsure.

If you agreed to meet outside Woolworths in Ashford town centre at 7.30pm but failed to show, there was little to nothing you could do about it.

Except, of course, for those pondering where their mate had got to, to place a call using a good old fashioned phone box to see if they'd actually left their house.

Public phones (you remember the things?) were once urinals before we decided to keep defibrillators in them.

If you were lucky there would even be a phone book in there with which to find their number. Otherwise it was a case of hoping you'd memorised it. We used to have to do that. I couldn't be sure of my own landline number today - let alone anyone else's. But that could just be my age. More likely it's because, frankly, I don't need to any more. Mr iPhone now does all the heavy lifting for me.

All you needed was some coinage. We used to carry money back then. A 10p or 20p would be enough to meet the minimum requirement and (hopefully) establish whereabouts before the pips sounded notifying you that your money was running out and you were about to be unceremoniously cut off.

Calls were, as a necessity, short and sweet. There was none of this strolling down the street on a video call or taking a call - inexplicably in my opinion - on speaker phone like you're on The Apprentice.

In the absence of that, you needed a phone card. Boy, did they feel modern when they were introduced.

They were as common in shops as SIM cards are today.

You paid your money and you got the equivalent amount in credit to use on BT's swanky new machines.

But you could stash them in your wallet - or have them thrust upon you by parents keen you were never stranded somewhere with no ability to call for help or order Dad's Cabs to come out for an apologetic late-night pick-up.

Likewise, if you'd agreed with your parents to meet at a certain time and place during a shopping trip to avoid being dragged around Marks & Spencer's then woe betide if you got it wrong or, as was so often the case, not used telepathy to realise that the meeting time had been brought forward by 20 minutes because they'd finished early.

Today, of course, we all have a smart phone. Young and old alike are armed with gadgets which allow us all to pinpoint our every move, be accessible every minute of every day.

Nights out now no longer rely on a pre-arranged meeting place - you can do everything on the hoof; switch plans at the last second, easily navigate any street in the world, in fact.

Your parents finished shopping before you'd agreed to meet? Well, they can just call you and demand you get out of your emporium of choice if you want to get a lift home.

Remove our phones today and many would struggle.

But here's the thing, roll the years back to an era before we all had mobiles, and it was rare an evening was in fact scuppered by an absentee. It was rare you couldn't just call someone's home and find out a message had been relayed back via the wonders of a phone box. Plus, we just stuck to the plan.

On shopping trips, parents may have been a bit tetchy, but they didn't, on the whole, decide to abandon their off-spring in the town centre and leave them to fend for themselves if they wanted to get home pronto.

We just worked things out.

Mind you, having a mobile doesn't half make things easier.