Messages from Another Life

The eventful life of my trusty old Siemens A62 mobile took another turn the other day when I fumblingly dropped it on a hard pavement. At first it withstood the blow with commendable fortitude - but not for long. Soon it was behaving very strangely, and all my attempts to fix it (including a degree of bashing and shaking)having failed, I realised the poor old thing was nearing its last gasp. I promptly ordered another Siemens A62 ('A design classic' - Nigeness) off eBay (£6.99, with charger) and it arrived, in the nick of time, today, in full working order and raring to go. As ever when swapping a SIM over into a new phone (at least at this low-tech level), it brings with it a seemingly random smattering of what was on it in the old phone. My phonebook seemed to be intact, but with additions I didn't recognise, left over from the phone's previous owner, a man with extensive contacts in the building trade. Having cleared those unwanted numbers out, I checked the SMS inbox and discovered that virtually all my messages had been lost, and what was left was intermingled with messages to the man with extensive contacts in the building trade. These messages, however, were not from builders. As I identified and deleted them one by one, it soon became apparent that this was a married man with a girlfriend with whom he was on, er, visiting terms and who was seldom entirely gruntled - who can blame her? The messages made oddly compelling - and guilty - reading, of a kind that, I suppose, is only possible in this mobiled-up age. In earler times, the nearest thing would have been chancing on someone else's private letters - but letters are very different things from text messages... What if, instead of these texts, I'd come across messages suggesting that two people were conspiring to kill someone or commit come other major crime? There must be a detective thriller in that (no doubt it's been done). Being me, of course, in those circumstances I'd hand it in to the police - and then where would I be? Back on eBay looking for another Siemens A62, of course - story of my life.