YOU may think I'm odd (my wife certainly does), but I've got this incredibly strange belief that phones are for making or receiving phone calls.

Nowadays, though, you can use them to take pictures and send to friends - or to their wives if you catch them misbehaving and you are an evil sort of person - you can use them to play games, or read the news, or check your millions through the latest Stock Exchange listings on the internet. Oh, and you can send electronic letters that are called texts. I reported in the column last week that the only way I can get a response out of my teenage daughter - who lives at home - is to send her a text.

A middle-aged female colleague remarked this week: "What did we ever do before mobile phones? I couldn't live without mine." No, love, you can't live without air, food or water. You can live without a mobile.

Being Neolithic man who has just learned to walk upright, I remember what we did before mobiles. We walked to the end of the street, entered a strange red box and shoved pennies into a slot before pressing button "A". We were not at the beck and call, day and night, of anyone to whom we had misguidedly revealed our mobile number.

And at least that good, old-fashioned telephone box gave us some privacy while making a call, so long as the vandals had not kicked in all the glass panels.

In any city street, at any time, and you will see at least a third of the population walking along like demented robots shouting, laughing or crying into a mobile phone. In the last week alone I have heard girls effing and blinding as they walked along having a raging row with their boyfriend; giggling with friends about who did what last night; and ordering food as they trekked to the takeaway.

I saw one bloke with his head down walk straight across the road as he concentrated on keying in a text message. He was totally oblivious to the screech of car brakes as drivers tried to avoid splatting him.

Cyclists also take their life in their handlebars as they pedal along making phone calls, never mind the drivers who ignore the law and manage to change gear, turn corners and check their make-up in the rear view mirror with a phone glued to their ear.

My daughter's just got a mobile phone contract which offers 1,000 free texts per month. She's worried about exceeding that limit and incurring penalties.

Her pal has a phone that not only takes pictures, it has a fun program that distorts those photos like a hall of mirrors. Jolly japes, eh.

Meanwhile, mobiles get ever smaller so that even the slimmest fingers have difficulty hitting the right button.

I admit they are useful. But gone are the days when you can tell a little white lie about not being in the pub when the wife phones.

In fact, I could have done with one the day my first child was born while I was out covering a huge mill fire. I got home in the early hours to find a note from my wife saying she had called an ambulance and gone to hospital (I had no idea which one of three).

By the time I tracked her down I was told I had a son. I don't think she ever forgave me.

Ask any girl what three must-have items she would want on a desert island, and she'd say lipstick, handbag and mobile phone, not necessarily in that order. Ask any young man and he'd say his car, beer and his mobile.

At least it solves one Christmas-present problem this year. I now know what to buy my niece's month-old son - so that his future can be Orange.