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A Range Rover killed my iPhone at the weekend. It was a shocking moment as I picked it up from the garage forecourt, irretrievably extinct, squashed out of shape by the monster’s left wheel. So instant and brutish was its demise I’m amazed there aren’t states of the US considering it as a means of execution.
The specifics of the event were mundane. The phone had dropped, unnoticed, from my pocket as I got out of my wife’s car at a motorway petrol station. Nine times out of 10 this would not have mattered but, on this occasion, my wife was feeling public-spirited and so, having filled-up, decided to move the car — something she would never normally do — to allow the Range Rover behind her access to the pump. She even, in the style of some movie thriller, waved at me to let me know she was moving as I headed back to the vehicle.
In the film version I would have been captured in ultra-slow motion, silently screaming “NO!” as I rushed to stop the impending catastrophe. But I was not, in fact, alive to the danger until the Apple was well and truly stewed. Even when I saw its body near the monster’s wheel, I expected some sign of life, a still-flickering light refracted through the shattered screen; a tearful last text as it shuffled off this silicon coil. But no, this was the deadest dead phone imaginable.
Naturally, I looked for ways to blame my wife. If she hadn’t moved the car. If she had not suggested I go into the shop first. I put real thought into how this might be her fault, which would not have helped the situation but might have made me feel better. But none of it stuck.
I did moan for the rest of the day about the bad luck but there was no way past my own culpability. Faced with the unpalatable truth that my wife was in the clear, I was left with no choice but to blame the Range Rover. This was easier since I nurture a visceral dislike of these tanks which clutter up streets but now appear to be mandatory for such hazardous off-road journeys as the school run and popping to Waitrose. A narrow car might well have missed the handset.
The absolute obliteration of the device did at least spare me the pathetic musing about how I might still manage to use it, disregarding the tiny splinters of glass I would be guaranteed with every swipe.
But then came the horror. No email, no phone, contact numbers, no text, no X. I had also lost our mapping app. We were visiting our daughter at her new university digs and had no idea how to get there, or where she lived because the address was in my now irretrievable texts. I did not know her phone number, because who knows phone numbers these days?
We were saved by the fact that my wife had her phone. But I remained tragically twitchy. Patently, this could have been worse. Had it happened abroad, I would also have lost access to all boarding passes, tickets, translation app and so on. Even so. We were going to be away for the weekend and I felt entirely adrift.
Fortunately, I remembered the existence of an old device that I had taken on a recent holiday as a back-up because, well because, see above, and which was still in my backpack. Once I salvaged my sim card I recovered much — though not all — of my missing self. In all, I was off-grid for no more than two hours. And yet, in that period, I could not focus on anything else.
So, aside from the obvious point about the iniquity of Range Rovers and the fickleness of wives, this rammed home the lesson that I really have a dependency bordering on addiction.
This should have been no more than an irritation. I could not access work emails but my essential information was backed up, the phone worked and it was the weekend. But even a few hours turned out to be too much cold turkey.
I can take more precautions. I can buy a physical contacts book, carry info on paper, not drop my phone under a car. But I must face a hard truth. We’ve all seen those thrillers where the hero has to drop off the grid to survive. In that instance, reader, I am doomed.
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