On phones ...

... just the other day I popped my mobile telephone on the table in front of me (at a pub, it's true) so I would know when Mr Brown had arrived, or had got lost or decided not to come and join us after all.
"I can't believe you still have that ratty old thing, it's disgusting," said a drinking partner.
I defended the poor, tatty old thing with words to the effect of, it works, it's not as if I use it all that often (something that irritates this particular drinking partner no end) and that Mr Brown would hand me down his nice Blackberry just as soon as he upgraded himself. "Disgusting" was a little harsh.
This morning (6:30 on a Saturday, those damned Americans did something to my brain I tell you), I read this, by Mr Fry. "We do not possess antlers, horns or tusks, we cannot display fans of feather or manes of fur, the best we can do is express our personality, aspirations, beliefs, outlook, sexual potency, status, right to breed and place in the hierarchy through the choices we make in our possessions: and no possession, here in the early part of the twenty-first century, speaks quite so loudly as our smartphone. Once upon a time it was our motorcar and in the future it may well be a robot, a rocket-pack or a hoverpenis that defines us, but for the moment it is, for good or ill, a smartphone."
Perhaps this does not apply to me because my phone is not one of these "smartphones", but if it does, I'm not entirely sure I like what it says about me. Cracked, worn, out of date, probably all true but still, one does not like to trumpet one's faults from the roof tops. I must start implying Mr Brown's phone makes him look like an elderly gnome or something.

O, and also, hoverpenis, wow, I do hope I'm allowed to have one!