Death of a Wankerphone
2009 so far:
1. Gareth nearly burned the house down. Or as he would tell it, I nearly burned the house down. It was an unfortunate alignment of random objects:
i. My make-up mirror, the one that magnifies your advancing years in spectacular fashion, was sitting on top of a cupboard, and then along came…
ii. A giant blazing beam of sunlight coming through the window (sunlight in Scotland in January, WTF) which bounced off the mirror and bored into…
iii. Gareth’s “Executive Chair”, which is made of some faux-leather crap so it started to smoulder … which Gareth discovered upon returning to a smoky office after lunch.
2. My book got translated into German, Finnish and American, so I’ve been pimping it to the max before it is consigned to the multilingual remainder bins of history.
3. Last night I washed my iPhone.
Before you say anything Mothership, I didn’t leave it in my pocket. You know I always check my pockets. Except for the 756 times I left crumpled tissues in them and you would bellow from the laundry, SHOORRRNNNAAA, and my heart would run cold.
Anyway, let me walk you through it.
i. On Sunday morning I emptied my laundry bag onto the bed and sorted the dirty clothes ready for washing.
ii. Went off to eat brekkie and forgot about clothes.
iii. 5PM and waiting for the Tesco Man to deliver the groceries. Sometimes he calls if running late, so I took iPhone into the bedroom and wedged myself up against the window. We don’t get mobile reception at our new place but sometimes you can get half a bar at the window if you’re lucky.
iv. By coincidence the Tesco Man arrived at that very moment so I chucked phone on bed and answered the door.
v. 6PM. Groceries were packed away and I remembered the dirty clothes. Went back into bedroom, didn’t both turning light on and scooped up pile of clothes. Put the washing machine on.
vi. Can’t find my phone anywhere.
vii. Four hours later, I remember that I’ve got clothes in the machine. I remove the clothes and there is the stupid phone. Dead, dead, dead and stinking of lavender.
I bought the iPhone last September after months of turmoil as to whether I should buy something so frivolous. It would go against the frugal farmgirl roots; I’d always been on £10 a month pay-as-you-go. But I eventually succumbed to lust and walked out of the O2 Shoppe with the goods, wobbly with fear and guilt.
It was like when I moved out of home and purchased Heinz tomato ketchup instead of Home Brand. Or when I first bought Nike trainers instead of Leisure 7s or plastic Apple Pies. I thought God would come busting through the clouds and say, “YOU. DECADENT. FOOL!” and vaporise me then and there despite my begging, “Please sir, I got them from the factory outlet.”
I loved that phone; I named it Basil. The whole time I was waiting to be mugged because you just know, deep down, that you’re not someone who’s meant to own that sort of thing. But I never thought I would ruin it by my own hand, for crying out loud.
Googling revealed that I wasn’t the only donut who’s washed their phone. Apparently laundered iPhones have come back to life after being left in a bag of rice for a few days.
“Arborio or basmati?” Gareth yelled from the kitchen.
“Basmati,” I said, reasoning that because basmati cooks quickly, it would heal my stupid phone quickly. Yeah that makes sense. Zoe joked this morning that we should have used arborio as it absorbs more moisture, and tonight I am looking at my cloudy-screened paperweight in its ricey-Tupperware coffin and sincerely wishing I’d thought of that.
Anyway, that was a very expensive load of laundry.
I just wanted to say, yes it was a Wankerphone as Gareth called it. But I loved it and it was very useful. I will miss my Mr Plow ringtone and how a photo of Gareth flipping the bird popped up when he called. I will miss listening to podcasts, checking train timetables, obsessing over to do lists, misspelling things with the touchy keyboard, compulsively checking email and squinting at electronic books.
Most of all I will miss the alarm clock. You could select noises such as “Harp” or “Robot” or “Bark”, the latter which sounded like a German Shepherd saying, GET UP OR I’LL BITE YOUR FUCKING LEGS OFF. But now I must rely on the Scottish sun to wake me up. If it can set a chair on fire surely it can get me out of bed in the morning.
