Disconnected from mysteries of the mobile phone

IN the eyes of my daughter, I am a vague old buffer who is never inclined to raise a fuss.

With a touching concern over my age and cardiac history, she has given me a mobile telephone, a tiny object devoid of any form of mouthpiece, and ordered me to have it by me in the car or away from home. I gather it is very much a bread and butter model.

“It doesn’t take photos,” she said, which I thought was a strange thing to say. However, she recorded several appropriate numbers in its phone book which is contained somewhere within its casing.

After she returned to her home in France, I spent a session trying to “access” the phone book, without success.

Since then I have devoted several more sessions to this end, sometimes assisted by friends and relatives, and only once succeeding. How this came about I can’t remember.

I shall certainly follow my daughter’s good advice and can only hope that in the event of a sticky situation, there will be on hand a knowledgeable person, perhaps a school child, who can persuade my “mobile” to perform its function. More likely, I will prevail on the ward sister to put me through on the hospital’s electric telephone, but I wouldn’t want to raise a fuss.