Mobile phones and dads

I finally got a new mobile phone then. I went back to my original port of call - O2 in Newark - and dealt with the manager. She asked what my requirements were, I told her and I got a new phone. It's the Samsung Fonemaster 2000, or something. I told you I know bugger all about phones so that's what I ended up with, it does everything I want from a mobile phone. My original intention was for the iPhone, but although I've got the money, something doesn't feel quite right about forking out £350 for a mobile phone.

I think a lot of that has to do with my dad. I could just hear the sharp intake of breath when I told him how much this thing had cost me. "You mean you've spent that much on a phone that plays records?" is what he would have said (Dad didn't really 'do' music. Apart from Brass bands, Russ Conway and, in later years, The Beautiful South but I think that had more to do with the fact that somehow he'd found out that they were from Hull). Swiftly followed with "Your trouble is that you've got more money than sense." I can see his point, this phone's cost me less that half what the iPhone does and it does what I want it to.

Not that my dad had anything against gadgets, no sir. Dad loved gadgets but they had to have a practical application. Like a combined cigar cutter and egg cup, or trousers with a built-in lap tray. When we cleared my parents' house we found a miniature trundle wheel for running over road maps. I'm now the proud owner of that. In his later years he became obsessed with softening water. He spent pounds on those Brita water filters (he had the top-of-the-range, complete with digital readout) and cartridges. He followed this up with a thing that he put in the water inlet pipe which was supposed to soften the water. It ran on electricity. So he had all this gear to soften the water to save on kettles. He was spending pounds on water filters and electricity. I think that might be called a false economy.

That was Dad all over. I don't think he ever had a new lawnmower, I remember as a kid he had a Suffolk Punch, which I think he had given him. Then as his brothers started dying off he always ended up inheriting their old mowers. I once went to see them and there was Dad in the garden mowing the lawn with a petrol-driven mower that looked like it was going to run away with him. Attached to this mower was a jam jar. The mower would, every few seconds, violently spit out petrol. When I asked his what the jam jar was for he told me it was to catch the petrol. Why he didn't just go and get it repaired I'll never know. Or why he just didn't bite the bullet and buy himself a new, decent mower, I'll never know either. But, I suppose, that's quintessential daddery.

Getting back to the phones, the money I saved on the iPhone I can put to better use by buying a gorgeous drum kit that I'm drooling over in a local music shop. I wonder what Dad would have thought to something nice and genteel like playing the drums..?

I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't understand

There are certain things that, over the course of this last weekend I know I'll never understand.
The first thing is the appeal of the film, Mamma Mia. You know the one, based on the music of Abba? I was perusing the female members of my family's Christmas lists over the weekend, and every one of them (out of four) had the Mamma Mia DVD on there. Now, I'm not one to start slagging off Abba, they did some good pop songs, and they did some bad pop songs, but why would you want to see those songs in the setting of a film?
Now, the film is obviously very popular; I was told on Saturday that it's only just stopped being shown at my local multiplex, and even then that was because of the impending DVD release (handily in time for Christmas). The film was released in UK cinemas on July 10th. So it's been showing continually for a quarter of a year. Now I'm not one to discourage people from going to the pictures, but is there nothing else that these women (and I'm assured from those who've seen it that the audience is predominantly female) would like to see instead? I was rather looking forward to catching Shane Meadows's film Somers Town when it was released on August 22nd, but guess what? None of the cinemas round here were showing it. Which is a shame when you think that Meadows lives fifteen miles from where I sit now. I suppose the screens were blocked up with Meryl Streep doing the splits and Pierce Brosnan being out of tune.
Never mind, I'm sure that Bjorn and Benny are currently sitting on their own private island somewhere lighting handmade Cuban cigars with high denomination banknotes, while a convoy of trucks pull up outside their homes in Sweden and deposit huge wodges of cash down a chute into their cellars. And good for them.

The next thing I know I'll never understand is the appeal of the mobile phone. I know they're incredibly handy things to have, and now I can have a camera with me wherever I go. The thing is, I was in a phone shop on Saturday buying a phone for my mother. She needs a simpler one to the one she's got because at the minute, instead of receiving calls, she starts taking accidental photographs whenever someone rings her. Well, I was just stood looking at the display to work out my options when I was more or less kicked out of the way by three teenage girls. One of them said "Yeah, this is what Darryl's buying me for Christmas. It's a lovely phone the LG GS666X-WANK ain't it?" A beautiful phone? Now, I like things that are aesthetically pleasing, but I'd never go as far as to call a mobile phone 'lovely'. It's a tool for communicating with, nothing more, nothing less. My boss often tells me that people at work who have the latest phone probably have absolutely nothing else in their lives apart from a fancy phone. For once I think he might be right.
You see, when I was a kid the things I drooled over were things to play music on. The more graphic equalisers the better. And if not stereos, it was poring over the browser in the local record shops looking at what records you couldn't afford out of your paper round wages.
Who knows, in twenty odd years time those teenagers might be blogging about why the kids of today are obsessed with teleportation devices, in their day it was mobile phones.

Stop press: Another thing I don't get, is the obsession with Diane Keen's tits. I get more visitors to this site looking for Diane Keen's tits that anything else. I wouldn't mind, but they're nothing to write home about.