Metropol

When you lose your mobile. Then you try to ring it from a land line ready to pull the cushions from the sofa to find out you've lost it in a place where there is no signal.

I'm gonna get one of those lost key contraptions. You know the ones, you have to whistle or make a noise and it guides you to the keys eventually. I'm going to make it my mobile phone gem.

For someone who hates phones, you'd think i'd be in heaven, but, it feels like i've lost my right arm.

I'm seriously thinking of going back to a housebrick mobile. The best phone i had was a Nokia 30 something 30. It never let me down. I dropped it down the bog, threw it across the carpark and launched it at a wall or two. The bugger still worked with the abuse i gave it.

Fortunately, I've only ever genuinely lost my mobile once, last September. As sad as this sounds, I found it one of the most distressing and upsetting experiences of my life - I'd actually have cared less about loosing my wallet.

I've walked around with a phone on me since 1999, and I genuinely don't know how I ever managed without it.

I do remember coping without a mobile. I was very upset when BT done away with the old red phoneboxes that smelt of wee and puke. You was lucky if it hadn't been vandalised.

Someone keeps ringing the phonebox on the corner near my salon. I've been tempted many a time to answer the caller with heavy breathing. Or should that be heavy wheezing with my 20 a day habit.

Back in those glorious days, before May 1st 1985, when the equipment for the few "mobile" phones completely filled the boot of a few cars, and rather perversely, you had to know where they were to know what code to dial to get them, I would always answer a ringing phone in a kiosk.

"Tear Off and Wipe, Toilet Roll Manufacturers, How May I Help You?" was normally good enought to throw the caller completely.