This is how my iPhone looked before I went to bed. I’d set it for the update it was due, with new features and security measures. Fourteen hours later, it looked the same. Which I why I found myself standing outside the Apple store in Covent Garden. The update had obviously frozen. After searching the interweb on my laptop and trying all the tricks offered for iPhone restoration, I was no further forward. In a blind panic, and after an umpteenth unsuccessful press of every button on the side, I decided to follow the final online suggestion as to what to do. Get help.
It’s only when denied access to something that your complete dependency is revealed. Back in the day, contacts might be on a Filofax, phone numbers in an address book, money in a wallet, time worn on the wrist. To lose them all at once would be impossible. Well, nearly. I once had them all in a briefcase that I inadvertently left in the waiting room of a car showroom. By the time I’d realised, the showroom had closed, but I went back anyway. Through the plate-glass window, I could see it beside the sofa I’d been sitting on. I just prayed it would be safe until morning. Yet, what if cleaners dumped it, or there were burglars, ram-raiders . . . every eventuality played on my mind. I would have camped outside on the pavement had it not been cold and wet. As it was, I was in pole position to retrieve it a good hour before the showroom opened.
And, in truth, being denied access to my phone has happened before. I’d accidentally locked it inside my car. It was a hatchback where the hatch could be unlocked without unlocking the whole car. I was on a farm, taking off my coat and throwing it inside while encircled by a cloud of horseflies. I’m irresistible to biting insects. To stop them swarming into the car – I could imagine them feasting on me as I drove home – I slammed down the back, only to realise that in my haste, the car key and my mobile were in the coat’s pocket. So I know how helpless I am without my iPhone. I was rescued by a friend who waited with me until the AA came to my rescue.
But with my locked iPhone, I was on my own, and facing certain armageddon. It’s a relatively new model, not that you can tell by looking at it. I’d bought a cheap cover years ago that has decayed, to the embarrassment of my two daughters who have tried to shame me into buying a new one – and even to treat me to one as a Fathers’ Day gift. But I looked upon it as a mark of independence and individuality. And anyway, it was stuck to the phone itself and I had no idea how to detach it without also ripping off the back of the phone. Safer to leave it be.
The trouble is, the mobile has become such a a vital part
of modern life
The trouble is, the mobile has become such a vital part of modern life that everything seems to centre around it, nothing much functions without it. And all I could think of, as I waited outside the Apple store, was the messages I needed to respond to, let alone the ones I wasn’t expecting and that the senders would be waiting for my response.
I also had appointments later in the day and now I was going to be late for them, and no way of contacting the people I was meeting. Even if I found a red phone box, their numbers were locked behind the frozen screen. They’d be calling me, wondering why I didn’t pick up, or wasn’t calling back. And what if the “big” call came? ‘Richard, your book is wanted for a movie. Are you happy with that? The producers need a response straight away.’ ‘Richard, you need to call me back now.’ ‘Richard, don’t bother. The offer’s gone.’
‘What time do you open?’ I mouthed through the glass doors at a security guard inside the Apple store. He raised both hands, fingers splayed that I interpreted as meaning 10 o’clock. I waved my frozen screen at him to show I had no way of telling what the time was now. He exaggerated a frustrated shrug and opened the door, but instead of telling me the time, pointed at a church tower that, when I leaned forward, I could see had a tower with a clock. 9.40.
Assuming it was accurate, I knew I had twenty more minutes of perdition to endure. A coffee stall across from the church offered me respite and sanctuary with a clear view of time passing. At 9.59, I headed back to the store, arriving just as the doors opened.
By 10.01, my iPhone was restored.
‘All you had to do was press these buttons on the side,’ a young, enthusiastic assistant explained, as the screen sprung back into life.
‘But it didn’t work when I tried it.’
‘It was the protective cover.’ She’d unpeeled it, revealing that it wasn’t stuck to my phone at all. ‘It was stopping the buttons from being pressed properly’
‘I didn’t know that came off like that.’
She nodded sympathetically. ‘Would you like me to put your cover back?’
I shook my head while trying to conceal my embarrassment at being so stupid. But her benign expression was one I’d seen nurses give in care homes as their elderly charges struggle with the simplest of things.
I suppose that’s one advantage of being a senior citizen. At least my stupidity is put down to my age, not just to being plain stupid.
I still haven’t got a new protective cover.
If you liked this blog, Richard’s latest feelgood novel, I’m Still Standing, with music, ’80s nostalgia and a touch of environmentalism is in bookshops and on Amazon now.