After spending the last blog slating my car I thought I would give it a break for a bit, there is more to come however.

Yesterday was my daughter's birthday and as part of her celebrations I took her and her two bessie mates to the cinema. We went to see the latest Robert Pattinson chick flick "Water for Elephants". To be honest I quite enjoyed it. It was quite a long film but didn't seem it and was quite evocative of circus life in Depression hit America.

I was interested to see this film as I did receive the original book (under suspicious circumstances I have to say) by my sister in law a few years ago. It was suspicious due to the fact that when in Heathrow before a trip the the US I bought the latest Salman Rushdie novel (not his infamous one). We were so busy on that holiday that I didn't get to read it and strangely, when I opened my suitcase upon my return home the Salman Rushdie book had transmogrified into Water For Elephants. It turned up just last year at my mothers house with my sister in law claiming she had no idea how it had got into her possession! A likely story.

Anyway when we had filed from the cinema the girls wanted some time to loiter around the Shrangri-la of commercialism that is the Metro Centre. I gave them half an hour and sloped off to the Apple store to play with the i-phones.

At our given reunion time my daughter showed up minus the other girls. Was my worst nightmare being realised - losing other peoples children in a public space. It transpired that my daughters phone had been misplaced and they had gone back to look for it. We couldn't find it and even asked customer services.

I tried not to be upset over this loss of electronic equipment. Gawd knows I use to lose stuff at that age but sophisticated gadgetry didn't exist in those days. No! I stuck to losing rulers and pencil cases.

We travelled back home with a gabble in the back as the girls compared notes on the film and the phone episode. It was a revelation compared with carting my 15 year old son and his mates about. It is like a scene from a cop movie and I have just read them their rights. They then are saying nothing until they have seen their brief. Extracting more than three sentences from them feels like pulling teeth and we usually lapse into silence. With girls it seems the opposite is true. Quite entertaining actually.

What happened next took me by slight surprise. I was late to pick up my son from a hard day loafing around town. His first words were "Did you get the phone?" I was most taken aback as to how he knew. He explained, The phone had been taken to an adjacent shop who had then taken her Mum's number and called it. I had no phone on me (I was watching a film OK and didn't want it going off in the cinema!) so she called Cameron so everyone knew where it was except those that could actually do something about it.

What is the saying? A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link? You're looking at him!