Wednesday 1 August 2007

Revenge? You decide...

Ladies and gentlemen: in the course of the past twenty-four hours, I have made a new, and very important scientific discovery.

I blame my trousers, for they were falling down at the time, and however you look at it, in no way can that be construed as anything other than a faux-pas of epic proportions on one's first day in a new job.

Here's how it happened.

I was looking for a safety pin to fix the broken zip. I failed, managing only to procure a large paperclip from the stationary cupboard in the hope that somehow - perhaps in some kind of parallel universe where errant clothing can be made to defy gravity by a small, rounded piece of metal with absolutely no fastenings whatsoever - it would do the trick.

I headed to the cubicle, locked the door, and placed my phone (because y'all know, it goes everywhere with me, in case I, well, start to die or something) on the top of the feminine disposal unit next to the toilet. A shinily modern, new-fangled, architectually pleasing toilet. With no cistern.

In retrospect, this was my first mistake.

Except it wasn't.

My first mistake was to not notice the slightly curved top of the disposal unit.

From the moment the slide began, everything moved in slow motion; a Hollywood voiceover of "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!" echoed around my head as I faced what was surely the ultimate exercise in split-second decision making. Because, you see, at the time, I was holding up my trousers.

With both hands.

~

My poor little Motorola. I did love it so, for it had a radio, and lovely earphones with a rich, full-bodied sound; it had also tirelessly rescued me from many a percieved agoraphobic emergency and now it, itself, had died. In a moment of overwhelming guilt, I realised that not only had I failed the trusty companion who had saved my sanity on so many occasions - I had consigned it to a watery grave.

A mercifully clean watery grave, I thought, as I rolled up my sleeve.

~

It was at this point that I forgot about my trouser dilemma, and frantically began to press the power button.

Hosed. Bogwashed. Ruined.

After a brief period of mourning - and the irritating realisation that in the time-honoured tradition of saviours the world over, its death was a needless one, because despite owning these trousers for close to six months, there was, apparently, a button I didn't know about - I decided that the journey home without backup was just too far out of my comfort zone.

This, then, is how I came to find myself, an hour later, walking into "Phones 4 U" - a strange, alien place, where I was faced with a bewildering array of handsets, a sudden influx of pushy sales assistants with bleached blond hair and diamante earrings (and that was just the men), and several life-sized cardboard cut-outs of their advertising icon, posed in various stages of the infamous hand-signal that would, were he not already dead, put Ted Rogers to shame.

I completed the transaction and left for home with my new sidekick - a Nokia - in tow. God, I hate Nokias. They're small, and fiddly, and irritating, and a technological expression of what is wrong with the world. But more importantly, despite being the cheapest in the shop, they're forty quid.

Forty!!

Checking that there was enough charge in it to cover the journey, I set off, annoyed at the outlay, but relieved at the familiar sensation of safety. I got it home. I plugged it in. I changed the ringtone to something that wouldn't make people stare at me on the District Line with a vague expression of pity.

With some help from a friend, I managed to turn off the infernal predictive text, not only because the T9 dictionary surely ranks as one of the most hideous, unusable inventions of the last decade, but because I refuse to be a part of the uprising of people making a mockery of the English language.

I even managed to set the alarm so that I could get up this morning and go to work, to recoup some of the expense.

So, as I switched out the light and settled down to sleep, it was with an overarching feeling of being quite pleased with myself. I, who cannot operate a video recorder and have trouble grilling sausages to a satisfactory conclusion because the cooker is 'too fiddly', had succesfully negotiated the acquisition of a new gadget and managed to make it work (and subconsciously reinforced a ridiculous safety behaviour at the same time - but we won't go into that).

~

This morning, smiling wistfully as I fished my dear-departed, soggy Motorola from my handbag to consign it to the 'slightly broken electricals that one day I will do something with' bowl on the table, I accidentally pressed the power button... whereupon the little bastard sprung into life, defiantly wishing me a good morning with its cheeky Motorola greeting.

So. That scientific discovery. Here it is. Don't spread it around now, but it is technically possible for an inanimate object to gloat.

3 comments:

Ness said...

I have a theory that electrical appliances are attempting to uprise against us. Today the phones, tomorrow the computers.

Anonymous said...

Ahhhhhh! I loved this. Laughed so hard. I've lost several pairs of sunglasses to the same devilish curve. But the best part of the story was the surprise ending. Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

I could have told you: you cannot kill a Motorola. I know, I've tried.