Since starting this, my latest, diet I've been making an effort to do more walking. Well, that was the idea but now my son has gone into his forward facing buggy I'm getting bored with the strolling. When David was in the car seat part of his travel system I could cover miles, chatting away to him and watching his reaction to the outdoors. Now though all I've got to look at is the hood of the pram, I feel bored and lonely before I've even got to the end of our road - and my walking regime was at serious risk of failure. Then my daughter won a new iPod from school and offered me her old Nano to use on my walks and the very rare occasion that I might go to the gym.

When she handed it over I quickly realised I'd rather buy new earphones than go to the bother of untangling and cleaning this set, so I logged onto Amazon to see what they had to offer. I had only one criteria, my new earphones were not to be Apple branded as (apologies to Apple aficionado's) their earphones are surprisingly rubbish considering how fab they make their electronic products. The JVC Gumy earphones jumped out at me, I remembered reading a positive review about them a while ago and the information provided on Amazon (along with their reviews) made me think these could be my perfect earphones.

The Gumy's come in a range of colours including shades to match the current wave of iPod colours, as the one Charlotte gave me is a gunmetal grey colour I didn't have to worry about mixing and matching so simply went for the set that appealed to me the most. Pink. And yellow. I couldn't decide between them so bought one of each, at the time hoping the earphones themselves would be good now I'd bought two sets but as soon as they arrived they looked so funkalicious that I didn't care! The colours are vibrant and fun, making the dull white earphones that most people are still wearing look the height of dullness - red, purple, green and plenty of other colours are there to choose from so you shouldn't have any trouble matching your earphones to your iPod. If that's what makes you happy.

The jack is gold plated and slides in smoothly with no resistance, once inserted it stays in place and needs a healthy jerk to remove it when you need to. The 1m cord (including jack and earphones) is snugly fitted into the jack housing and is such a good fit that I'm not expecting any exposed wires anytime soon, my pet hate when seeing the wiry state my daughter lets her own earphones get into within days of buying them. It's a supple cord so I don't worry about bubbling or splitting it when I wrap the earphones round the iPod in my pocket, it's quite a thin cable so I find it does tangle quite easily if I'm not careful how I put the earphones away but to be honest these do untangle very easily too so I'm not too fussed about that.

The earphones themselves are quite comfortable, there's something about the shape of them that makes them fit beautifully but after about an hour they'll start feeling heavy on the edges of my ear - and once that irritation starts I take them straight out as I know the next stage is soreness, and I'd rather be bored on my walk! They do fit nicely in the curve of my ear, I did take a while to get used to the fairly 'loose' fit as I was constantly putting my finger up to push them in more securely but after a few wears this seemed much more comfortable than official iPod earphones which feel like they're reaching into your brain when you put them in.

The sound quality through these earphones is fine for me, as a very casual iPod user. There's no tinniness and most genres will play crisply and well, I've noticed heavy bass doesn't compute too strongly through these earphones but my usual R&B, Hip Hop and nostalgic 90s tracks all sound great. Charlotte listens to a lot of rock and she swears the music doesn't sound as good through the Gumy's, but then that could also be her natural urge to steer clear of bright happy colours. The joys of teenagers, eh?

These JVC-made earphones are currently £4.50 on Amazon, or marginally cheaper on Ebay. I personally think they're a great buy and that is definitely a great price, they do leak quite a lot of noise when I've got the volume turned up but this is easily explained away by the fact that they don't create a very good seal in my ear. This could be a problem if you regularly use public transport (or listen to very embarrassing music) but for my leisurely walks through the park it's not an issue.