Last Tuesday my mobile kept doing the thing where it randomly switched itself off during a conversation. The battery was low, but it wasn't that low. I've had it do that before, not long after I got it, so I know it means the battery is going. And it's only going to get worse, to the point where it's completely unusable as a phone.

I established at Christmas, by accident, that there are now such things as cheap phones that don't do all the million things the manufacturers seem to think you need them to do, but actually don't. Which makes it cheaper to buy a new phone than a new battery.

Since I was off on Friday I went into town where there is at least one phone shop for every network. After going into Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U and the Orange shop, I went to the cheap shop. And then to the other Orange shop where there were three members of staff and the only other customer walked in at the same time as me.

I tried out a few phones and bought the only one that doesn't have moving (ie breakable) parts and keys big enough to press (seriously, I only have little fingers and if the keys are too small for my fingers no one else has any chance). Annoyingly, you're not allowed to just take your SIM card from your old phone and put it in the new one. I never satisfactorily found out why. Except it means you have to wait for your number to be swapped over. Which the woman in the shop told me takes 24 hours.

48 hours later I rang them up and they told me it would take a maximum of 72 hours. It finally changed Sunday night. The trouble is that I had a text message I wanted to keep, so I forwarded it to mum's phone, then dad forwarded it to me Sunday night. Well, first he forwarded me a message that said 'forward', then sent it to my landline (no Tom Baker to read it out any more, though) and by the time I got it I found it was still on my old phone anyway.

So now I have a new phone. It was £15 more than the old one, doesn't have Tigger on it and has annoying polyphonic ringtones that some bright spark thought would be a good idea. And it does more than my old phone. But handily you can get a cut-down menu on the main screen that just has phone and text. Much more useful!