Puppy love?

I talked to my lovely friend Slippers about my recent contretemps with TL, though I admit I slightly glossed over the part where I hit him 20 times after finding out he had had a rendez-vous with a former love, and concentrated more on the fact that he'd abandoned me to 'think' again. There is a connection, I can see it now the red mist has faded somewhat, between people finding a sudden urge to think deeply on their own, and being whacked repeatedly by someone shouting like a fishwife. Mind you, men, if you don't want GBH, don't go sneaking off to see former loves, no matter how justifiable you believe the circumstances are. If he'd told me what he was doing, I might have been .....slightly less annoyed. And I definitely would only have hit him ten or eleven times. No, the question is not really why TL is thinking, but why on earth I have not been.

The answer is both too simple and much too complicated, so I'll turn again to my dear Slippers. Her solution, to the 'lite' version of the tangled tale, was that I should go out and get myself a puppy.

'You can't think about anything when you've got a new puppy, you have to spend all day clearing up widdle,' she enthused. Hmmm, tempting.

We do have pets already - the divine Mme Bovary, who is currently very cross with me as we were away after Easter and her dainty little pink nose is out of joint, and Jumbo the rabbit. Jumbo, I'm ashamed to admit, is getting me down He sits all day in the corner of his cage, in a monumental sulk, with short outbursts of anger when he stomps around attacking his bedding with great fury, sometimes fixing me with a malevolent brown gaze (his cage is in the study where I write). He is never, never, never nice. He bites the children. He would no doubt bite me if I went anywhere near him. Frankly, he gives me the willies. And talking of willies ...people say he will be a lot better if we have him 'done'. But, oh, the responsibility, the guilt ...the vet fees ...

I thought about Slippers' puppy idea for about 30 seconds. Then I decided we'd get the next best thing - an iPhone.

For years, my mobile phones have been a joke. My first was second-hand, my second was the only one in the world without a camera, my current one was popular with a lot of Child Two's class two years ago but they've moved on to better things long since. A large part of me resists all this phone fashion nonsense. But then, another part is fed up with getting lost in the car. The connection? The iPhone has a built-in GPS tracker. So I wouldn't have to buy a Sat Nav. Yay!

I was still mulling all this when Child Two dragged me to the bright lights of Bromley to buy much-needed pedal pushers. She only has crops, clam diggers and capri pants and obviously needed pedal pushers from Zahra. On the way to Zahra was an o2 shop. And, before I knew it, I had a gleaming white iPhone complete with fancy red leather case.

There we were in the changing room at Zahra, playing with the lovely phone. In it went to its gorgeous new case. Out it came ....oh no, it didn't. What? It was stuck? I yanked at it, Child Two yanked at it ...but it was firmly embedded in the case, showing no signs of wanting to come out. Ever.

What kind of a phone case is this, I wondered? Hardly useful if you get an important call, then have to spend ages wrestling the phone out of its case to take it. Finally, with more huffing and puffing than it took Child Two to get into her skintight pedal pushers ('Yes, they are the right size, Mummy, and no, I don't need room to grow,') I managed to extract the phone. Phew.

Off we went home, and immediately, I tried to insert my old sim card, to get the phone working. Out came the space-age, bendy metal wishbone thing, up popped the sim holder - but how to get it in? Oh well, I just shoved the sim in and hoped for the best. That'll work, right?

Er, wrong. And I had just poked the sim right down into the innards of my lovely new phone, where it had stuck fast, like Winne the Pooh in Rabbit's doorway. Twenty minutes later and I had tested my new Sure Maximum Protection anti-perspirant to the limit, while ramming a hairgrip, tweezers, a needle and a knife into the iPhone and rummaging desperately. Finally, I managed to extract the sim, milimetre by milimetre, no doubt doing huge damage to various vital chips en route, and sat, panting with relief, at the kitchen table.

Child Two looked at me pityingly. 'Maybe you're not quite ready for an iPhone yet, Mummy,' she said, patting my hand sympathetically, as I am sure she and Child One will do when they sign me into the maximum security Home for the Hopeless Elderly next week.