Incredible adventures

The Incredible Adventures of iPhone Dax (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Her Resourcefulness)

Granted, I might have been several more than three sheets to the wind (see: Encyclopaedia Of Life, entry on Being Totally Fucking Hammered, page 42). And iPhone Dax is usually glued to either hand or my pocket during my waking hours, pisht or not. But when I woke up with a hangover registering 8.6 on the Just Let Me Curl Up And Fucking Die scale, I admit it took me nearly half an hour to realise my partner in crime was nowhere to be seen.

As the Hitchhiker’s Guide teaches us, it’s always important that you DON’T PANIC.

So I didn’t. Considering I was fucking mardy as all hell that something was not measuring up to my personal definition of playing fair (see: Encyclopaedia Of Life, entry on Not Needing To Be Kicked When Vulnerable, page 23), I think I displayed the self-restraint of an aged Vulcan by not going off on one during the increasingly frantic search of my weeny flat.

Sitting down in the world’s most comfortable chair with a laaaaarge cuppa tea, things looked more manageable. I was remembering fragments of the night/morning before I woke up. iPhone Dax in my hand. iPhone Dax in my pocket. Me checking she was still there as I left the taxi. Me stopping to Tweet someone at the door to my flat, cos there’s no net reception in the foyer or lift. Dax in my front pocket as I stumble into my bedroom.

Sigh of relief as I realise she’s got to be in the flat somewhere.

And then I hear it: that DING! of a text message. I heard it! She was definitely there somewhere… Jumping ont net, I mailed and Tweeted folks to ring me, and not stop ringing me till I answered. Plan? Plan.

She started ringing and I became convinced she was behind my bookcase. Except I’d already pulled that out and checked. She was ringing again, so I gave up second-guessing both myself and her and just pulled the bloody thing out again. It was then that I realised she was close but sure as vodka don’t freeze in my top compartment, the way I was going there was not going to be a cigar in it for me.

She must be behind the partition wall, I realised. So close, yet so far - as most things in life. I scrabbled round the other side, puzzled as fuck cos my bed is against that wall - and it’s a built-in bed. There was no physical way she could have been between the bed and wall, but it was the only option left. If there’s one thing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has taught me, it’s that once you’ve eliminated all the possibilities, whatever you’re left with, no matter how improbable, must be the solution.

So I wrenched and yanked and shifted and swore and groped. And, as I heard her ringing (Billy Squier’s Everybody Wants You - how’s that for irony?), I found out two things about the flat I’ve lived in for nearly a year.

One: there is, for some unknown reason, the weeniest gap between the bed frame and the wall, one that my wrist had trouble squeezing into AFTER I’d pulled it wider. Below this, as secret as Earth’s satelite Cruithne, is a depression that could pass for a sunken platform, approximately ten inches wide.

Two: under the flukiest of circumstances, should a small, flat item fall from, say, a pillow and arrange itself just so, it would be possible for it to insert itself in this sliver of space. Trapped inside the same miraculous bubble of crazily random happenstance, it could turn around and slide itself round to push itself into the hidden pocket of darkness.

And right there, ladies and gentlemen of all ages, is where I found iPhone Dax, lying there as if she hadn’t chosen to take herself off for some quiet reflection without some impatient human constantly playing with one or two of her apps at once.

We’ve had a chat, and I’ve conceded that I do need to give her more time to herself, to go exploring every now and again without me, and of course, time to dream. So I’ve agreed to turn her off for a few hours every day. In return, she’s agreed to tell me in advance when she plans to run off, Indiana Jones style, to have an awfully big adventure without me. Oh, and to let me know when she’s fucked off and just wants some time alone, so that I’m not a biscuit away from totally fucking losing it when I find her gone.

And so it goes…

Soopytwist, everyone.

Tags:
Apple ~ iPhone ~ Hong Kong