Start Me Up

Today’s title is in tribute to Charlie Watts, drummer with the Rolling Stones, who’s passing was announced earlier. And the item I was trying to start up was this iconic old Nokia 3310 mobile phone. I discovered it at the back of my bedside drawer and, to be honest, have no idea why I’ve hung on to it - I’ve not even had a contract with Orange for well over ten years!
In the early days of the iPhone, people used to swear by these Nokias, citing unfeasibly long battery life. There were many stories of phones being in a drawer for a year or two which, when switched on, still had three bars of battery. Sadly, this was not one of those phones as it was definitely flat when I found it! I don’t appear to have held on to the mains charger, but there was an in-car charger with it, so I took advantage of a trip to Barrow and back to see if it would charge up. And it did, as you can see. I’ll leave it for a couple of days to see how well it holds that charge before offering it on eBay. I know there was a demand for these phones a few years back (which might be why I hung on to it) but I appear to have missed the boat in that respect as about a tenner seems to be the going rate nowadays. Still, if I end up £10 richer, the house becomes a little emptier and somebody gets a usable, reliable phone, then I think we can call that a result.
The purpose of going to Barrow was for a last full band rehearsal before Sunday’s gig. Didn’t go too badly, but there are still a couple of numbers I need to work on over the rest of this week. And returning to today’s title, we do have a couple of Stones classics in our set - Satisfaction and Jumping Jack Flash. Written over fifty years ago, they were hits when they were released and were still in the set when I saw the Rolling Stones in concert, thirty odd years ago. And I know they’ll go down a storm when we belt them out on Sunday.