To hell with the books. I'm getting a smartphone.

It’s official. My mother is a geek. “But that’s impossible” you might say. Well, does your mother own a Dopod? And a Dopod 900 at that. Windows Mobile 5, QWERTY keyboard, WiFi connectivity and I can’t remember what the hell else that phone contains. Suddenly, my crummy old Nokia 7250, which I’ve been looking at with growing distaste the last couple of months, looks even older and crummier. Its features include the call function which I suppose is pretty modern if you look at it from the perspective of an anthropologist. What’s more, instead of surfing porn on-the-go, I can work my hands in much healthier ways with wholesome family games such as Bounce and Triple Pop. Or else I could choose to do vigorous arithmetic with the calculator function.

Of course, watching my mother use her new device, its drawbacks have become obvious. For one, it is far too big for any of her hands or even any of her handbags. I also suspect that the only way for anyone to use it successfully as a phone would be to have a face as big as mine. And it’s far too heavy as well. Weighing in at 285g, she might need to transport it around in a trolley.

Still, the undeniable truth is that my mother - a middle-aged woman who refuses to learn how to use an oven and who once ingeniously plugged a USB cable into a parallel port - is now more gadget-y than me. To hell with the books then. I’m getting a smartphone.