Too Old For Mobile Phones

I quite like going into shops that sell gadgets and pretending I'm a techno-idiot. Granted, I don't have to pretend that much, but I like to think I have a certain level of understanding that means I will be able to keep up with what the shop assistants are saying.

I see these trips as an observation window into human society; I am more observer than consumer. But sometimes I do buy something.

Like at the weekend I bought Andy an i-Phone for his birthday. Stupidly, I thought I could just go into a shop, say, 'I want an i-phone, please,' and I would be provided with one there and then. I'd done my research first, which involved flitting in and out of the numerous mobile phone shops that make up about of a third of the retail outlets in our town. I even went into the Apple store, thinking they might sell them. Apparently not. 'We don't sell them here,' said one of the two gorillas who were guarding the door. 'I'll clear off, then, ' said I, thinking, shall I ask if they sell apples, just to see if I could get them under the trade description act.

'So what's the difference between an i-phone and a Blackberry?' I said to one twelve year old spotty oik. (He wasn't twelve, but might just as well have been for all the attention he gave me.)
'Well,' said Spotty Oik (missing the obvious joke of 'You can't make a crumble from an i-pod), 'basically they're the same.'
That's helpful, I thought.
'Oh,' I said.
'Alicia Keyes and Christina Aguilera have got Blackberries,' he continued.
Is that a selling point, I thought. I wasn't quite sure where he was going with his sales patter (if you can call it such), but I was willing to loiter about and tolerate him conversing with me whilst staring over my shoulder for a while longer.
'Business people have Blackberries,' Spotty Oik said. Now he was multi-tasking - conversing with me whilst looking over my shoulder AND doodling on a scrap of paper.

Gradually I got the idea that what he was trying to say was that girls have Blackberries and boys have i-phones 'coz of the apps.'

The apps? I looked confused although I secretly knew that 'app' was short for 'application'. I was enjoying my game too much to let Spotty Oik get away too easily.

'You can get them from 57p,' Spotty Oik said.
'Each, or per kilo?' I said.
He looked confused, so I left.

In the next shop I learned that touch screens are easier to use than keyboards, that I could bolt on a dolphin, a monkey, a canary and a tiger (or was it a puma?). That the new i-phone was not much better than the old model and certainly not worth the extra money, and that one can purchase a multitude of different, and sometimes exotically coloured cases to protect your i-phone from droppage, ploppage, sittage and smashage.

All the people I spoke with were keen to get me to sign up to a contract. For two years, if youb please. I mean, okay if you're obviously a spring chicken, but I could be dead by then. All lost interest when I insisted I wanted a pay-as-you-go, especially when I discovered that there was a year of free wi-fi interwebbly access thrown in already. And most of the contracts involved 600 texts a month which is way too excessive to my way of thinking and would just give Andy stiff thumbs.

So I chose my purchase-from shop based on the fact it was a lady assistant I spoke to and she didn't mention the word 'contract' once, and off she trotted to get me a phone from the stock room.

The phone had to be ordered. I collected it on Saturday. I had to stand in a queue for AGES. But Andy was pleased.

Except that there appears to be a setting up problem. It is causing angst. Andy keeps saying, 'Should I do this? ' and 'Should I do that?' and I have to keep saying things like, 'I don't know. I am a techno-idiot. Phone the helpline.'

Meanwhile, since I embraced phone ownership in 2001, I have owned a mere 3 phones. The first was a Motorola that looked like a brick, the second was an old Nokia of Andy's that I decorated with a cover of Ermintrude from the Magic Roundabout, and the third is my current one which is like a tiny pink pebble and is used for speaking into and texting from, and sometimes checking my biorhythmns. It does a lot more, apparently, but I can't be fussed to use it to its full capacity.

For I am too old to be mucking about with phones.

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Apologies!