Red Spot, Tooting Bec platform poster

Can mobile phones be magic?

My instinct says 'no'. I don't mean to exclude any bits of the world from magic-ness, or to emphasize any bit as being magic-er than the rest, but when I look back at all the things I've decided are magic I find that natural things predominate, with an apparent magical subsection for anything with a silly name.

Some natural magic things -

Monkeys
Caterpillars
Tigers
Snakes
5 leaved clovers
Magpies (haven't blogged about that yet)
The Wednesday Morning sky on Oxford Street
Innocent Smoothies (5 fruit in a bottle!)
The number 5
Fruit?

Some funnily named magic things -

Tooting Bec
Richard Herring
Muffins
Mr.Big Daddy Potato

I'm sure there's lots of magic stuff I've forgotten about too. Like, didn't I once have a brief magical fling with the power of Soho Square? I suppose that could fit both categories. Soho ho ha ha. And it's a green place too. Plus it was to do with Pret a Manger Avocado Salad wraps. Enough said.

Anyway. My point is that shiny plastic, microchip, man made, practical things, such as mobile phones haven't been magical for me before.

Maybe that's about to change?

I've had a Nokia pay-as-you-go mobile for 6 years. Make that 7 actually. I got it when I was pregnant with Amy. You know, just in case I went into labour in Sainsburys. I realise now that the time between going into labour and needing a partner is plenty to get you home to use a landline, but the guy at Carphone Warehouse didn't tell me that.

As you can imagine my 7 year old Nokia is rather basic. I've been persuaded to upgrade to a new phone because I've sent a lot of texts to Steve recently, and also because of the look of shame on his face every time I'd get this bottom-of the-range 7 year old phone out of my bag. So I've gone and found myself a new monthly contract phone. I got the Nokia N73.

Yes, I'm showing off. I know the name of my phone, and I know it's a good one. The Nokia N73? Oh? 3.2 megapixel camera. Out just last week. Yes, that's the one!

I'll be honest. A phone with a camera. A phone with a colour screen. A phone with more than one menu... That's going to feel special.

But is it magic?

I think it might be.

Well, maybe not the phone as such... But you see there's this tiny red dot..?

Red is my least favourite colour you know? I have a six year old. I have to give a great deal of thought to favourite and least favourite everythings, colours especially.

Yes. Favourite colour - orange. Second favourite - yellow. Third favourite - green.

Then Amy says crossly, "But green is one of my favourite colours!"

And I say...? My least favourite colour - Red.

I made a hole in my favourite T-shirt today. That was one of the many little things that I carefully haven't been writing to Steve about.

I feel quite down at the moment. I've been letting lots of really stupid little things get to me. Things at work, things at home. Mum staying things, Steve being away things. Things form the past, things now. Just things. Just everything.

I know it's silly. I know nothing is really bad. But knowing that only makes it worse, doesn't it? You scream at yourself, 'You're being silly!' Then hate yourself more for the silliness and screaming.

I wanted to go out tonight, I wanted to go and play poker at Gutshot. I haven't played poker for ages! I haven't been out for ages... And as it's the WSOP final tonight there's a free buffet. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. It's not the food. I'm a vegetarian so buffets are useless. No, it's the occasion. I like that events like the WSOP final tables are marked, noticed, made something of, by a buffet in London.

And Steve's there writing about this for Gutshot, so if I go I might get to talk about him. He is my favourite subject. I have a six year old so I know about favourite things. Favourite subject - Steve (by a mile.) Second favourite - Big Potato Daddy. Least favourite - work.

It was a boring set of circumstances that meant I didn't get to Gutshot. Instead I stayed in and shopped online at Sainsburys. And I forgot to buy muffins too.

As I online-shopped I also responded to one of Steve's very nice emails - without writing about a single one of the things on my great long list of things that are bothering me. Well, he's working, and I want him to be happy not worried. But I'm saving them up. He's back on Sunday. He won't know what's hit him!

One of the things on this 'bothering me' list was about my amazing new mobile phone. And I mean amazing... Nokia N73. It surely must be the best phone in the world? Do you know you can put your music on it too? So as I was playing with it, and taking photos, and videos of Amy pulling faces... I noticed a little red speck on the screen. Just a little red speck. Just a red bit where the proper colour didn't show. When I'd seen that speck it seemed like I couldn't see anything else about my amazing new phone.

I'm very bad at getting things done. Especially at the moment. I knew I was unlikely to kick up a fuss and get a new phone because of a tiny red dot, I knew I was unlikely to even have the get-up-and-go to read about what this red spot meant. It was just a tiny little speck. So I would convince myself that it was meaningless, and that no one else would even see any problem, all at the same time as hating my new phone and feeling like it was quite ruined now.

You see, red spots on mobile phones are magic. They're just a tiny little thing, but I let them spoil my enjoyment of the best phone in the world. (Nokia N73) That magic speck is just like all the stuff that makes me depressed right now. I see these, and not any of the super features of my Nokia N73, 3.2 Megapixel, life.

Unfortunately thinking like that won't stop me focusing on that tiny red speck (rather than enjoying the 1GB of storage for MP3s) but simply being aware that there's a whole phone there, and not just an ugly red speck..? Well, that's quite a helpful start.

And I now think the Nokia N73 product manual is more magic than any Tooting Bec tiger - with the 'Care and Maintenance section' the most magic-ked part.

It says, 'Some displays may contain pixels or dots that remain on or off. This is normal, not a fault.'

Which means I don't have to shout, 'You're being silly!'

This is normal. That's what it says. And it says so in this magic place.

So you see, I love my Nokia N73 with it's little magic red spot.