Ear, ear

So, I've had my new smart phone with the touch screen doo-dah and tippity-tap whizziness for nearly three weeks now. It has many pros. For example, I can check my e-mail in the flash of a flashiness, and no waiting for a laptop to crank itself up and decide if it can, nay indeed wants to, connect itself to the Interwebbly.

I can text very easily. It has a programme called 'swype' which involves, well, swiping one's way back and forth across the keyboard like a mouse on ice-skates. It has caused me no end of entertainment. Also, the starter package I got had 3,000 free texts with it to use in the first month. I am battling gamely to get through the allocation, but have to say I've only managed to use 87 so far. And that's going some for me. Another 2, 913 to go. I'm not sure I'll get through them. Not without developing some digital disfigurement anyway.

I can find out where I am on a map. Generally, I find I am right here. Or sometimes there. I can Google on the run. I can remind myself about things I am liable to forget by using an assortment of bells, whistles and ding dongs. I can also download games like 'Clouds and Sheep' although it has been causing me some angst because my sheep keep eating poisonous mushrooms before I can get the weed killer out, and then they walk around in a state of fuzzy green burbleness looking tres ill until I spend 5 points on an inoculation to make them all better. And then the stupid things stand under thunderclouds and get themselves electrocuted by lightning. I am sure real sheep can't be that stupid. Surely not?

I can take photos. I took one of Tybalt. He looks like a cross between Oscar Wilde and Vlad the Impaler.

I also have 3 hours of free phone calls. And today I made one to a delivery company who left a message on the house phone yesterday saying they had a heavy delivery for me and would I call to arrange a suitable date and time? And their office hours were 9-4 which is no good for those of us who work from 7.30 - 5 and can't use the work phone to make personal calls. So I used my smart phone and some of my free minutes. (The heavy delivery turns out to be the black 'n' white floral Laura Ashley bathroom tiles - they are arriving on Tuesday, along with the range oven which I am VERY EXCITED ABOUT! And I suspect, as the plumber starts the bathroom refit on Monday, that there will be a lot of plumbing equipment kicking about. And the occasional loo. And basin. And showery bits. There's going to be a certain amount of chaos chez le manor on Tuesday.)

And it was at this point that I discovered a con to the smart phone. Because I was put on hold for a while by the delivery company whilst they located my heavy load, I had the phone pressed to my ear for a few minutes. And when the call was over I was left with a moist imprint of my right ear on the surface of the phone.

Ooo-err. That can't be hygienic, surely?

And whilst it was interesting to see an imprint of my ear, which I've never seen before so there's a first, I can't help but think I should start carrying a packet of antiseptic wipes around with me should anyone else's ear other than mine own shell-like come into contact with my phone and, well, you know, bugs 'n' germs 'n' stuff. Bleuch!

As it was I had to buff away for a while with a tissue to remove my own sticky residue.

But aside from that, the phone is fun! Oh, and purple. Which is always good in my book!