Phones- 4-U (but mostly Heather)

It rained really hard last Wednesday. Last Wednesday was a day of rain-soaking-through-to-the-pants day. It was also a rain-so-hard-Heather's-mobile-phone-got-drowned day.

This proved to be a depressing occasion for Heather. She is, like all youngsters these days, lost without her mobile phone. Bereft. Bereaved. And what with one thing and another also happening this week, culminating in a visit to casualty very late Monday night/Tuesday morning with a severe allergic reaction to something or other as yet undiagnosed (probably being a debt-laden new graduate in 21st century recession-ridden, job-scarce Britain), it all got a bit too much for my girl yesterday and a little cloud of gloom settled over her as she succumbed to a Mummy-cuddle and 'let's-talk-about-how-crap-life-can-be-sometimes' chat on the sofa to try and make it all better.

'Right!' I said, gripping the situation and shaking it firmly by the throat. 'We are going to make this day better. '(Because that is what mums do. Or try to do.)
'This is THE PLAN,' I said. 'We are going into town to sort out your mobile phone. And then we can find somewhere to eat. And then you can come with me to Adult Education and then we can come home and have hot chocolate and scones for supper.'
'Okay,' said Heather.
'And also you can be my body-guard as it will be dark when I finish Adult Ed, and we have to walk home because Andy has taken the car to Shropshire,' I added.

So off we went.

Now, our home town has five basic forms of retail outlet. They are: hairdressers, fast food, pound shops, opticians and mobile phone shops.

'Where do we start?' I said, as we stood at our starting point. We could see four mobile phone shops from there already, and that was without thinking about the ones in the three shopping arcades.
'I don't know,' said Heather. This is where we share a common bond. We both know little about the subtle nuances and intricacies of mobile phones.
'What kind of phone do you want?' I said, desperate to find retail hook.
'I don't know,' said Heather.
'Okay,' I said, because my main criteria for a mobile phone is, does it feel nice to hold? My current phone is a nice smooth, oval, pink and silver pebble of a thing that does a satisfying snap-shut motion, like a clam. But then my point of reference for mobile phone styling is very limited. In twelve years I've had three phones - my current one, a previous one that belonged to Andy to which I added an Ermintrude phone cover, and my first phone which was a blue house brick.

'Let's go into Phones -4-U,' I suggested, only because it caught my eye as I looked around.

In we went. The next hour was spent like this.

'Hello. We'd like to find out about a mobile phone contract,' we said, because we had, at least, established that Heather wanted to move from pay-as-you-go to contract as it would save her money.
'Right,' said the saleman. 'Come and sit down and we'll go through some options.'
'Okay,' we said.
'Nmn £$^*(HUI jfuer.kc9n32=[dnj3lbcyua,m,' said the salesman.
'Really?' we said.
'hfyr833 &*($()Pfp midoa lovjehs ;p[;abe ;]34 fd-= de02he ;sdY3,' said the salesman, writing something on his assessment sheet,' mjf9p4q lv0rq -ie9pq Orange, iofeq, Vodaphone, n9[[4e, nur9q.5. fewq0[4, Virgin pants.'
'Right,' we said.
'Internet?' said the salesman.
'Yes,' we said.
'Insurance?' said the salesman.
'No,' we said.
'N04n. 48ef vf834[bfg ho dpq f0q34 9120-45 *(%RFVJ fnruep,' said the salesman.

And so it continued. I could feel the draft of confusion flying low over my head, but Heather was nodding sagely and asking very clever questions about touch screens, heat sensitive buttons and Facebook. And the salesman was very, very good and didn't try to make us have more than we wanted or needed.

But the result was one very reasonable mobile phone contract (even I thought it was reasonable and I am generally appalled by all things mobile phone related) on a Blackberry phone that does everything, apparently, apart from making the tea and filing, a charger to use in the car that Heather hasn't got, a couple of memory cards, an additional, very basic mobile phone loaded with £10 credit ' just in case the battery on the Blackberry runs out at an awkward moment,' and, get this, £50 for her old soggy mobile!

Now that's my kind of shopping! Exit two previously gloomy, now much cheered girlies.

And we had a celebratory sandwich, I enjoyed another successful Adult Ed session, we got home without being mugged (although we were shouted at by some morons in a car; bless them, it must be hard to be so out of control of such tiny, tiny brains) and we sat on the sofa drinking tea and hot chocolate and watching comedy re-runs on Dave.

As the Mitchell brothers would say - 'Sortid!'

And as Pop Larkin would say - 'Perfick!'

And as Heather's Mum would say - 'Phew!'