My ancient Nokia phone died a few weeks ago. It had a black and white dotty (I don’t know what the technical term for it is) screen and was strangely exciting to my young student friends who would grab it from me and say things like “oooh – my Mum had one of these ages ago” or “oh my GOD – you can play snake on this – can I have a go…please”. To be honest, I don’t even ‘fess up to having a mobile to many people partly because it’s so ancient as to be embarrassing and partly because I don’t want to have a conversation with anyone while I’m in Tesco or driving. I know this drives Claz and DM completely nuts but there you go.

DM gave me an old (broken – its battery won’t hold a charge and replacing the battery didn’t change the situation) phone of his for emergency use. It held the charge OK if it was switched off so if I found myself in trouble, I could switch it on and use it. That happened when I got stranded in Tesco car park because the sunshine bus wouldn’t start so it served its purpose.

Both of my parents have recently changed their phones and so they promised me one of their cast-offs. This is what came. Despite being officially a cast-off, it’s unused. My SIM card works in it so I get to keep my old number and it works. That’s all I care about. Now, despite having owned the dead phone and therefore the number for 10 years or so, I still couldn’t tell you what my phone number is without looking at the card in my purse that I use to get credit on it. I reckon I must be the most frugal mobile user ever – before I went to the Azores on my field trip for my degree (in summer 2011), I put £30 credit on it and I only had to top it up again a few weeks ago so I think that’s a use rate of about £10 per year. Therefore I don’t care if this phone is another oldie or if you’d consider it “naff”. I’m sure it’ll do me just fine.