Like most people I carry a mobile phone around with me whenever I am out of the house. Its now an essential piece of equipment for modern life, like carrying my glasses and my credit cards. The trouble is that I’ve been cursing my old mobile for ages because although it worked well, recharging it was a real pain. Connecting it to the charger was so very fiddly and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve spent a long time and lots of curses trying to get the connection just right so that the phone would recharge.

After a couple of years of this I decided out of sheer exasperation to make a change and started looking around for a new mobile phone last November. The trouble is that I am one of those people who find themselves baffled by too much choice. I can remember years ago, long before I was married, going into the local Toys-R-Us for a Christmas present for my young nephew and leaving with empty hands after a couple of hours as I was just totally confused and baffled at the amount of choice available. There are so many different mobile phone models around, all with different facilities and all at different prices that my brain fused every time I went into my local mobile phone shop. And I’ve been going into the shop virtually every week, staring at the display of all the different models, failing to make a decision and beating a hasty retreat.

Then this Thursday I saw this one. Not black as in the photograph but purple. Just what a Red Hatter needs. It not only caught my eye, the price was reasonable and it has lots of facilities that I can play with. So I bought it, with real relief that my ordeal was finally over. Orange (the mobile phone service I use and have always received good service) transferred my (old) phone number to my new mobile overnight, and Yesterday it became my new phone.

The first thing I did was to download onto my new phone a tune to become its new ringtone. Too many times I have been on a train or on a station and an ordinary ringtone has gone off and everyone in listening distance has reached for their own mobile phone to see whether it was theirs ringing. I did not want that, I wanted a ringtone that was special to me alone. So my old phone had the music from Mission Impossible (the tv series); this one has the film music from Superman (the original film – I’ve always loved John Williams music from this film). I am unlikely to find too many other people reaching for their mobiles if someone rings me.

I’ve got a lot to learn about my new phone and much I can do with it, from downloading music onto it to learning how to use its FM radio. Those I shall learn and play with over the future months. For the moment I have a phone that works effectively. And isn’t a pain to recharge.