Published at 09:39, Friday, 22 January 2010

THERE was doubtless a sigh of relief around the Orange mobile phone empire the other day.

For after being the less than proud possessor of one of its communication devices for something over two years, I have just invested my second tenner in their pay as you go service.

Well that’s not strictly true; it was actually Mrs Hextol who did the investing, because I have no idea how to perform such a feat on my mobile phone.

In fact, I have very little idea how to perform any of the multiple functions that the device promises me – such as answering it.

Because of my increasing deafness, I have to carry it in the breast pocket of my shirt to stand any chance of hearing it at all.

As a result, on the few occasions it does ring, I leap several feet in the air, much to the glee of colleagues.

I did once get one of the girls in the office to put it on vibrate, rather than ring, but that was even worse, as every time it went off I was convinced the jiggling and tingling feeling on the left side of my chest was a heart attack.

When I do answer it, I never know which button to press, so I frequently cut the caller off or put them on loudspeaker.

Then the whole office can hear Mrs Hextol saying: “You’ve pressed the wrong button again, you silly man!

“Our grandchildren can use their mobiles; why can’t you?”

Fortunately, very few people outside the family know the number, so the majority of the calls I get are wrong numbers, frequently, for some reason, emanating from South Wales.

Despite my assertions that I am not someone called Ianto, I am frequently invited to select parties in Haverfordwest and Milford Haven, and the fact I have yet to put in an appearance has not stopped the invitations.

I would really quite like one of those fancy ring tones which everyone else seems to have on their mobiles.

I have a very Alexander Graham Bell traditional dring-dring, when what I would really like is something like Flatt and Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the theme from Uncle Mort’s I Didn’t Know You Cared, or Hylda Baker saying “She knows, you know.”

It wouldn’t make it any easier to answer, but at least it would be more fun.

Mrs Hextol is of course a dab hand with her mobile, her fingers flying like those of a silk loom weaver on piecework as she bounces texts all round the world.

She can also use it to take photographs and record video footage, which she can also send on to all and sundry.

She will sometimes hand it to me to show off the latest image of gambolling dogs or winsome grandchildren she has captured, but as soon as the phone enters my magnetic field the images disappear.

She shakes her head in despair, and I have to watch over her shoulder while she displays the pictures for me.

No matter how gingerly I handle it, holding it by the very tips of my fingers, and ensuring that I touch no buttons, the screen will go blank.

Orange got very excited about my renewed interest in its wares, and bombarded me with text messages ladling me with something called Canary rewards; hours of free calls and more texts than I could shake a stick at.

I regret the texts will sadly go unused, for compared with my texting ability, my use of the mobile itself is magisterial.

I can usually manage to read the texts, virtually all of which come from the same sordid source – a never ending tirade of very rude jokes and offensive tirades which could get us both arrested.

I have to instantly delete them for fear of the phone falling into the wrong hands, but don’t always get that right either.

Instead of deleting, I sometimes inadvertently forward them to a strait-laced distant relative, inducing an attack of the vapours in the leafy lanes of Pott Shrigley.

If I endeavour to text back, my chipolata-like fingers invariably press three buttons at the same time, and transmit at best an incomplete message, or at worst an incomprehensible one.

One such fumbled foray into the world of texting brought an urgent – and serious – query from the non-intended recipient inquiring as to whether I had suffered a stroke or heart attack in mid-transmission!

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk