For the oldest swinger in town

My son Justin has been on at me for some time to 'get with it', to embrace the modern technology and buy an MP3 player.

Personally, I don't see the point. I've got all the music I need in my extensive CD collection. Why I would want to replace it - probably at huge expense - with a new format, I can't for the life of me conceive. I have yet even to see MP3 music for sale in shops, ayway.

Yesterday, however, I found myself in the unusual position of actually buying such a player. Not for myself, you understand, nor even for young Justin. Instead, it is destined to be used by my grandmother, Ethel Blunt.

At 102, her arthritic hands make it somewhat difficult to change the tapes in her cassette player. She's also (more than once) become convinced that she's broken the darned thing, when all she's done is accidentally press the 'pause' button.

I considered a little CD player for her, but, I fear, the same difficulties would present themselves. Then, following a discussion with Justin, we agreed that perhaps the MP3 player is just what she needs. No tapes to change, no CDs to fumble with. Just 250 carefully selected tracks that (Justin tells me) me, we simply have to 'rip' and 'burn' to the player. She'll then just have one button to press, and she can be away in a world of her own.

And therein lay our dilemma. Her eyesight (she claims) is not so good - although she can spot a bit of fluff on the carpet at twenty feet, when she wants to). So we were looking for an MP3 player that could easily be used by a centenarian. The bigger the buttons - and the fewer of them to press - the better.

As we toured the shops in our quest, yesterday, Justin reminded me more than once that our search was counter-intuitive. The whole point of MP3 players, he said, was to contain the maximum amount of songs in the smallest amount of space. He was right. Virtually every model we inspected looked like it might be a key fob of some description.

Anyway, we finally hit upon one that looked like it might fit the bill. It was in Music Zone in Sunderland, where the disbelieving sales laddie shook his head more than once when we explained what we were after.

For those of my readers with aged relatives seeking a similar solution, I can commend to you the Prolectrix 1GB MP3/4 Player - just a shade under £45. I'm not sure that Prolectrix is a particularly big name in the world of audio technology, but I see that they also produce a line in Epilators, described as working "like a pair of large tweezers... the 36 discs rotate and twist bunches of hairs together, plucking them from the roots". I shall have to pass the news on to Mrs Blunt.

It's a brave man who accuses Bill Blunt of being a technophobe. I liked this little gizmo so much, I might even buy one myself. It will be sad to see the CD go the way of the old 33rpm record, I suppose. But you can't stop progress!

It don't mean a thing, if you ain't got the swing

I see from today's Independent newspaper, that Ewan Morrison, a self-proclaimed Scottish Purveyor of Erudite Filth, claims to have spent a year 'swinging', while 'between' novels.

His 17 Point Guide to Swinging (and reading about the sexual exploits of other people is always something to be relished as you tuck into your bacon and eggs on a Saturday morning) is a handy 'cut out and keep' guide to the current state of sexual mores in the UK. Two websites set up to cater for this new breed of sexual experimenters both claim to have around 700,000 'members' (no pun intended) - although swinging being what it is, I imagine there is a lot of overlap between the membership.

Perhaps I need to underline at this point that neither Mrs Blunt nor myself have ever felt the need to 'swing'. She is a fine woman, someone to be savoured and not shared. Any marital needs I might have are most ably met by her, and those that are not are filled by the admirable dishes served up at the Light of Bengal restaurant.

Not for me the wanton pleasures of watching other people in the act of copulation. I will leave that to the Scottish players, for now.