"SEE this one here?" asks the enthusiastic salesman. "It's got wallpaper, it's got screensavers, it's got a digital zoom camera and data synchronisation.

"Buy it and you've also got a free Bluetooth headset, you've got a tri-band, a mobile multimedia portal, and you've even got a fun-box with two games in it.

"What more could you possibly want for your £169.99?"

"Er...something to take phone calls?" I ask, weakly.

I am standing in my sixth mobile phone shop of the day.

I am a 43-year-old woman and my interest in having a polyphonic rendition of 'Smack My Bitch Up' to ring out every time my pals call me is, at best, limited.

What I want is a replacement for the metallic blue brick I bought for £30 from Marks & Spencer four years ago, and which I suspect is now lying beneath a bed frame in a hotel room far, far away.

At any rate, it was not in my luggage when I needed it to get my chauffeur to collect me from the airport.

So what I want is a smaller, neater version of the late lamented brick, preferably for £30, just like the last one.

I wouldn't mind if I could store more phone numbers on it, but that's about the summit of my vaulting ambition.

I can see my negative attitude is robbing the salesman of his job satisfaction, just as his patter is robbing me of the will to live.

In the end I forego the delights of the fun box and settle for a pay-as-you-go silver bauble with lilac flashing lights, at the eye-watering price of £80.

But the financial consequences of losing my blue brick are nothing compared with the social trauma that has followed its sad demise.

Before mobile phones infected modern life, I used to hold a seemingly limitless number of telephone numbers in my head, but now I realise how dependent I have become on an inanimate object.

I have effectively lost my entire address-book, and feel as if I have spent weeks tracking down forgotten telephone numbers.

Worst of all, some are ex-directory, and I will simply have to wait until my friends get so hacked off at my apparent neglect that they send me a stinging text message of rebuke.

It all rather gives the lie to my assertion that I only have a mobile phone on sufferance.

So, what was that salesman saying about multimedia portals?

IT may seem hard to believe in view of this week's soaring temperatures, and I'm sorry to have broken the news if you weren't already aware of it, but we're in for a rotten summer.

Some bloke who is apparently a whiz with long-range weather forecasts has come up with this depressing prediction, which has duly been publicised nationwide.

He reckons that after Friday we can say goodbye to the sunshine until, ooh, at least August.

Can't somebody pay this man to keep his mouth shut, to stop him from upsetting us all like this? Quite apart from the careless way in which he is toying with British morale, he is taking away one of life's mysteries and depriving the nation of its favourite conservational gambit.

All that remains for us to cling to is the hope that, in the finest tradition of weather forecasters, he's got it wrong again and a glorious five months awaits us all.

Updated: 10:00 Wednesday, May 19, 2004