Phone Charge Anxiety
While traveling home from London on Saturday evening, the battery on my mobile phone died – much to the amusement of my eldest daughter, who I had accompanied for the day. I will admit that it was likely all my own fault – since getting an iPhone, I have been installing anything and everything – coffee shop apps, walking apps, voucher apps, health apps – you name it – I had it. Notice I said 'had'.
All I had done all day was look at the map for a few moments after leaving the train station, read the news while on the train, and take and post a few photos while walking around HyperJapan (photos are on Instagram), and later Forbidden Planet (perhaps the best comic book store in the country). At some point before leaving London I noticed that the little battery meter in the corner of the phone screen was perilously low.
Without really trying to figure out what caused it, I switched off location services entirely, and uninstalled a few (read: a lot of) apps.
While trundling out of London on the train, I started fiddling with the phone – trying to figure out what had happened to it – which runaway app had gone on a battery munching expedition during the day. While being incredibly smug about how much charge she still had left on her own phone, myself and Miss 18 somehow broke into a comedy-routine rant that Mark Watson would have been proud of:
'Well that's it – my phone's flat. I might as well just jump out of the train window right now. There's no point even doing that though, because I can't tell anybody it's happening, or post pictures of it. I might as well stop eating too – what's the point of eating anything if you can't take a picture of it? I don't even know who I am any more – if I don't keep taking pictures of myself continually, I'm not sure I even believe I exist. It's been entire minutes since I last saw myself, or anybody else – people will wonder where I've gone – they will be wondering what's happened to me! Where the hell are we anyway? I can't look on a f*cking map to find out! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS!'
(I actually shouted the last bit, and Miss 18 nearly peed herself, laughing uncontrollably).
We carried on, ranting nonsensically about anything and everything that we now couldn't do – and ended it all with Hitler's Bunker internet meme levels of resignation – which made us laugh even more.
People sitting nearby on the train probably thought we were utterly, utterly insane – but our cheeks hurt from laughing so much we didn't care.