My little necessary evil – my mobile phone – is doing its utmost to sabotage life and generally vex me. It’s frequently insisting that it can’t connect to a network. In the middle of London. Thing is, I don’t know whether it’s the cheap Motorola W377 phone or the O2 Pay As You Don’t Go SIM card that’s to blame. I’m tempted to just hurl the thing into the Thames and be done with it. It does remind me how much we take these gadgets for granted. The minute they break down – that’s it, party cancelled. At least, the more impromptu type of party.
And how very 2008Â I’m left with a phone that can take a photograph, or play Sudoku, but which can’t make or receive a phone call.
I would like to heartily endorse a different gadget, though. I’m writing this entry on a brand new Samsung NC10 ‘netbook’, or ‘ultra-portable’ mini-laptop. It’s like a Travel Scrabble version of a normal computer: half the size, half the weight, yet the keyboard is close to full size. Which was the ‘deal breaker’ for me: writing on a Blackberry or anything smaller is just too fiddly. Thebattery seems to lasts forever, and as is typical with these things, the hard drive is actually three times the capacity of my iBook, just because it’s been made three years later. Oh, and at half the cost – £299.
Because the iBook is just that little bit too heavy to lug around when travelling – or at least, too heavy for me – I’d had my sights on a mini-laptop for months. As soon as I can afford it, I promised myself. Of course, the day I COULD finally afford it – after my first pay cheque with the new job – the device I was after effectively obsolete.
‘But I thought the Asus Eee won all the awards for Best Little Computer Of The Year,’ I protested to the shop assistant.
‘It did,’ he replied. ‘But that was a month ago. This is the next one.’
It IS very cute, though…
***
A recent Sunday. Lawrence G’s last day before deportation. I meet him in Marine Ices, Chalk Farm, along with Talulah and David R-P. Even though it’s him that’s leaving, I come away with presents: flowers and scarves.
In the Gents toilets, what looks at first like a folded-up nappy changing table turns out to be a state of the art Dyson hand drier. You lower your hands vertically – cautiously – into the radiator-like apparatus, then an almighty jet of air blasts any hint of wetness into another dimension.
I get back to the table and babble excitedly to Lawrence and Talulah about this sci-fi experience.
‘That’s what I love about you,’ says L. ‘Only you would get so excited about an electric hand drier.’
At which point David joins us
‘Wow!’ he says. ‘There’s this amazing hand drier in the gents…!’
***
A discovery from re-entering the world of work:
All moments are stolen moments. Work, sleep, leisure, creativity, romance, shopping, enjoying the latest developments in electronic hand driers. Even doing nothing is a stolen moment. You just realise it’s a deliberate nothing.
What’s exhausting me is not so much the work itself but the strain of learning it as I go along. I’m still trying to take on board and remember all the various quirks and details of information that are second nature to those who’ve been here for a while. So far, I’ve been concentrating on turning up on time, remembering my entrances and exits and cues, and generally trying not to walk into the scenery.
Further across the floor is Mr D, who’s already taken me for a post-work drink. At 7am. There’s a pub in Borough Market – the Market Trader, I think it’s called -Â that opens in the early morning, with last orders at 9am. We catch a bus across Tower Bridge to get there, watching the sun come up over the Thames. All the iconic London landmarks at their best, in the comely pink prism of dawn.
Tags: mobile phone awfulness, netbook loveliness, the joy of Dyson hand driers
