Phoney baloney

…shattering
when you inevitably drop it, but they’re also bad because they tend to
partially obscure the camera lens when you’re taking spontaneous shots
for the website. A phone pouch doesn’t keep your phone dry in a toilet
bowl either, as I discovered after peeling mine off the phone. My pretty little
Nokia phone/camera had drowned.
When I took the battery out, I discovered that, although it had been in the
water for only about a couple of seconds, the phone was full of water. When
I got back to my van, I shook out as much water as I could, then put the dismembered
phone on the demister and turned it up full.
When I got home, I was pleasantly surprised to get a minute or two’s signal
from my bedraggled mobile before it carked again, and to cut a longish story
short, after three days of off and on drying on the demister, my Nokia is back,
completely intact. I have promised not to attempt to drown it again, but I have
to admit I haven’t yet bought it a new pouch. It’s the Scottish
in me.
This phone drama has a creative footnote. My Adelaide correspondent and friend,
Iain Ross, sent me a collection of haikus relating to PCs. There’s something
about the precise demands of the haiku that favours a Zen-like solution, so
even a hoodie from Moonee Ponds can sound like a retired Samurai, but I liked
quite a number of these paeons to various PC dilemmas, and I asked – nay,
demanded – a haiku from Iain about my phone.
Protesting unfavourable circumstances, Iain still managed a couple of gems.

A slip of the hand
communication is lost
washing does not help

This second one came after I’d told him that the Nokia’s voice
had been returned to its original Finnish.

phone transcends toilet
normal transmission resumes
prayers are answered

Iain also pointed out why the statistics first mentioned can’t be that
reliable.
’Unfortunately, at our age, what was a simple mistake becomes a sign
of increasing infirmity. Don’t admit this to anyone. You didn’t drop
your phone in the toilet, it just became slightly damp and no longer operates
– alude to a mishap with a waiter and a chai latte, much more acceptable
in our ageist and facile society.
One of my colleagues (much younger) dropped an expensive PDA in the toilet.
He has been given a second hand Nokia. I suspect that he would have got a
new PDA if he had said it was stolen rather than what actually happened. (No
matter, I got the new PDA instead, so some good came of it! I just have to
work out what PDA means and how to use it!)
If this mishap is, in fact, a sign of increasing mental and tactile frailty,
then we can just thank the gods that Strats are as big as they are!’
He’s right about everything, but particularly about human nature. As
I feverishly tried to dry my phone under the toilet hand dryer, I was already
imagining having to front up to Crazy John’s (how apt!) and explain
how my phone had died. Anything but the facts.