Ruby Grimshaw joins the next mobile century

Everyone is very impressed I have a BlackBerry. As well they might be, because when I went in for an update on my old phone just before Christmas – I’d somehow forgotten to do it the year before – the young male assistant, who looked about nine years old, gave my poor mobile such a disparaging look I felt sorry for it. It had given me such good service for so long I felt very disloyal. It had fallen out of my pocket while riding, been sat on by a rather large friend, and attacked by Deet in Borneo removing all its paintwork, but it still worked fine. (Actually it had been doing some odd strange things in the last few months, like ringing up my boiler man continuously. He must have thought I had a thing for him. I began to worry he would turn up and charge me an emergency call-out fee.) The main thing about my old phone was that I knew how to use it.

“When this BlackBerry was slapped in my hand I looked at it with terror.”

Yet I have got used to it much sooner than I thought. Being able to take and answer my emails while out seemed great at first. Now I rather miss checking them when I get back – especially when there is no post and no messages on my landline so that I feel unloved and neglected. One is never satisfied.

I have decided that I am not going to put my BlackBerry in my jeans back pocket anymore because it fell into the loo last week. I fished it out immediately – luckily I hadn’t got as far as actually using the loo – and wrapped it in a towel. I am told this is exactly what I should have done, but I should also have turned it off, which I didn’t. It seems that one should also put it in the airing cupboard, but I haven’t got one. In this age of combi boilers and central heating does anyone have one? The only person I know with an airing cupboard is a friend who breeds tortoises because the eggs have to be kept there before they hatch. Getting sheets and towels out for her must be a precarious operation.

Anyway, I remembered I had switched my electric blanket on ready for going to bed, so I popped my BlackBerry, still wrapped in its towel, under my duvet. And there it stayed until the morning. And it is absolutely fine. So far…