"THERE'S just too much technology about nowadays." That was said, with feeling, at one of our festive season social gatherings.

I do agree. There's far too much technology washing about which we don't need, but have to pay for to replace worn-out gadgets.

We were discussing mobile phones, bane of railway carriages but great peace of mind bringers for mums with highly-mobile offspring.

My phone is several years old and clunky by today's flip-open standards but the keys are big enough to see and it does everything I want it to do. It makes and receives calls; sends and receives text messages and stores the numbers I routinely need. What's more, I can work it. Given its age, however, it's bound to die on me before long and that's what we were talking about. There's a need for an utterly basic, easy to use, pay-as-you-go mobile for those of us who don't feel the need to impress anyone, photograph anything, see the person we're talking to, gain access to our e-mails and have personal ring tones for every regular caller.

In the long run, that little number might sell well to technophobes and justify its existence by extending the market.

Still on phones, our e-mail phone reached the end of its line last month. The new one has an internet link we don't need, but its answering machine can't cope with sharing a gang socket with the computer. That never troubled the old one. (Why do we have an e-mailer when we have a computer? Because it's handy as we're not on broadband, doesn't get viruses, generally doesn't attract spam and won't accept attachments full of terrible jokes.) I feared, too, that technology might also mean the loss of a favourite bit of household gear. Our electric coffee percolator developed a wheeze - at more than 30 years old, it wasn't a surprise - and we could find machines for filter coffee, espresso or cappuccino large and shiny enough to run our own coffee bar, but no plain old percolators.

"Don't make them any more," said a not-very-interested department store assistant. Oh yes they do. As we did when Teasmades seemed a thing of the past, we tried the catalogue shop and bought a shiny new model that does what it says on the box. It makes coffee.

On a distinctly non-techno search, for an egg-separator as mine hadn't survived a bounce on the kitchen floor, a puzzled cookshop assistant had never seen one and said I could just juggle with the shell. I can, and have been doing, but I haven't mastered the art of not dropping the yolk on the worktop when trying to answer the phone. I could have put my separator down.

Well, that's the e-mail phone, the coffee perc and the egg separator. As things go in threes, I'd say that should be it for now. Gives 'em time to think up some more technology before the next thing goes wonk, I expect.