Look darling, I've got to go.: Praise be to Almighty iphone.

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Praise be to Almighty iphone.

The Almighty iphone, which has been surgically grafted to my right hand since its arrival yesterday, is telling me it's 09:53 on the dot, and I'm feeling like an eighty year-old who's been left out overnight in December. I'm not terribly tempted by what I feel the day has to offer so I resolve to remain in bed until I take root or am driven out by a compulsive urge to cheat on my diet with a bar of Galaxy.

What does the Almighty iphone have to say? No one has emailed, though I'm relieved to see that erectile dysfunction can be cured by sending my bank details to some guy called Dave, and I can make a quarter of a million quid by laundering money for a company in Nigeria. Maybe I'll take them up on that if I don't have a job by the end of the week - the money laundering, I mean, not the cure for erectile dysfunction. Though I suppose there's always the off chance that even that'll come in useful one day.

My Facebook feed is full of babies (I'm sorry girls, you say 'adorable' I say 'part-boiled monkey') and there's a spate of 30^th birthdays which serve as a painful reminder of the fact that my own mid-life crisis is just around the corner. Funny isn't it, that the 2^nd Lieutenant is essentially away foooreeeveeer (ie. until April) but my birthday (May) is just around the corner? I feel a wallow coming on and flick to a tune on the Almighty iphone, the title of which I deem worthy of my current state of mind; 'I'm on my own' by Vincent Vincent and the Villains. (Check them out, by the way, they'll rock your world.) Cue a little pastiche of imaginary events; me showering dejectedly (no wally singing into the scrubbing brush and turning on the cold jets so he can laugh at his girlfriend shrieking and trying to hide from water in a shower cubicle); me in the kitchen, measuring out single-person portions of breakfast and failing to open jam jars; me in the living room, watching Jeremy Kyle and eating peanut butter off the teaspoon. You get the picture. I can see my whole day stretching out before me and it's not pretty. My iphone, however, is. Hurrah for technogadgetry!

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The gist of the thing

It's September 2008 and I'm cremating several slices of bacon and a couple of croissants in a somewhat pathetic attempt to serve up the perfect leaving breakfast, his last meal as a free man, to my boyfriend, who has only just thought to pack a bag and is racing round emptying drawers and making a mess. 'I'm going to have to clean all this later' I think to myself as I watch him digging through the laundry pile like a Jack Russell unearthing a dinosaur skeleton.

The bag is no sooner packed and the breakfast eaten (or hastily deposited in a plant pot), than his father whisks him off to The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. I refuse to go for fear of blubbing hysterically and destroying our reputation before he's even donned a pair of combat pants. It's hard to look chic in an evening dress when everyone's seen you with snot candles.

So I decide to do the strong thing and stay at home, sobbing so uncontrollably that I drop my phone in a glass of orange juice before he's even on the M6. We'd only lived together in our tiny Salford flat, our very own little Green Zone, for a matter of months but had become rapidly accustomed to each other's company. It's hard not to really when the living room struggles to accommodate a two-seater sofa. So you can imagine my glee when my phone, still a little damp and smelling somewhat citrusy, rang that evening and his familiar voice brought news of the first day. He'd arrived safely, they had queued for a long time to be issued some hideous green overalls and a pair of trainers obviously surplus from the 1980s. There was so much to say, and it was so good to hear his voice, but he stops short; and that's when he utters the immortal words that were to define our relationship from that day on; “Look darling, I've got to go”. Something had come up.