It is the last day of winter, and I am pulling myself out of my metaphorical hibernation pit and looking around and blinking. It has been a long, wet winter but now there are occasional hints of blue in the sky, the daffodils and crocuses are pushing up, there are thin ribbons of light in the west as I leave work, as the sun sinks a little bit later each evening.

The end of winter is time to look at myself and take stock. Several things occur to me. I have the posture of a sack of King Edward potatoes, which is only going to get worse if I spend the best part of the next quarter of a century slumped in an office chair. Around the head I look like the long-lost fourth member of the Hair Bear Bunch. I can’t remember when I last visited the barber. My stomach still appears to hold quite a bit of the reserves of fat I built up to survive the winter.

And my phone is rubbish.

I’ve had it for a few years, not being the type of person who actually uses the phone a lot, other than to field calls from people wanting to claim back my mis-sold PPI, write off 70 per cent of my debt, or get me some compensation for the accident I never had.

However, Mrs B has recently availed herself of a brand, spanking new smartphone, which was practically forced upon her by her phone company because she’s been nursing the same old pre-historic handset for what feels like several geological eras. She has never bothered about a smartphone before, but suddenly she’s all video call this and Instagram that.

Meanwhile, my phone has a permanent orange light on it, which used to be green, runs down its battery in about five minutes, and has developed a rather awkward habit of turning itself off whenever I try to send a text or make a phone call. So, of course, I have serious phone envy.

“I know what you’re going to do,” says Mrs B. “Copy off me.”

“No I’m not,” I say, quietly closing down the upgrade page on my phone provider’s website. She has this thing about me copying. For example, if she embarks on any exercise regime, I always think it’s a good idea and say I want to do it too. I am forbidden – hence the gut. I suppose I could always find my own thing to do, but what Mrs B is doing always looks like more fun.

So I am surreptitiously looking at upgraded phones and working out if I can get away with having an identical phone to her. “What if we get them mixed up?” she says.

This could be quite likely, I think, but I’m sure we’d find out quickly enough. If the only calls on it are from people wondering if you’ve had an accident in the last three years, it’ll probably be mine.