I have a phone. A lovely phone. Well it's not what I wanted really.

I spent a while looking at phones, wanting a touchscreen, models were released elsewhere and never here. Finally I settled on a Windows phone - something treated with disdain by a lot of people - but it had a free upgrade to Windows 7 - or so I thought.

There was no front-facing camera, but I've only made one video call and that was to one of my brothers-in-law who was in the same room. I wasn't sure I would like the touchscreen keyboard, which I didn't, but it can be easily used as a wireless router though I am sure that an app can easily be written to do this.

I've only got six months left of my contact to go, cashback is nearly done with, and then I can adjust my tariff as I don't need what I originally got anymore. Problem is with phones....water.

I should have moved on the bus, but I just sat there while some drunk man coughed his way to oblivion. The times he wasn't coughing I thought maybe he had passed out, but then it started again. He was very good but he got me once with his flem.

Being a cautious individual I wanted to get rid of any possible infection so I washed my hair, and my jacket where he got me. I was doing it rather quickly and I had taken everything out of my jacket but 10 minutes later I thought, "where's my phone?"

I had previously washed my MP3 player and put it through the tumble dryer, initially that had been displaying irratic behaviour but the pocket had been zipped, the one my phone goes in is open.

I did try to switch it on but it looked like something might have been sparking but I realised it was the twin-led flash. So I took it apart, as much as you can and left it to dry near a radiator. After googling the problem I decided maybe I should try an airing cupboard overnight.

I got up today and my phone did switch on, told me I had a text message, I went to read it and then it started acting irratic again. Nothing I could do to make it work and the screen looked like it had a burn-in image of an ink stain with a straight line at a diagonal about a centimetre wide.

I then decided maybe it needed more time, so I turned it over. I then realised that one thing I had forgot about was the memory card, having just looked at it 5 minutes earlier. So finally I took that out too.

So I am just going to leave it, take care of it, maybe turn it over again this evening, give it a few days. It might work, but it might never be the same again. One of my last phones I recycled for cash but I doubt I would get anything for this.

I wasn't going to get a new phone but I suppose now I need to. The question is what one.

Hopefully my phone will work long enough to rescue whatever data is on it, but I did upload it a couple of times to this thing online that preserves it so some of it is retrievable.

I know you're not as stupid as I but if that text message was from you, sorry I didn't reply.

Last updated 5th November 2011