After Defeating The iArgonauts, My Phone Is Now Here!

Imagine the trickiest thing you had to do? The most baffling task in the world ever? Maybe it's all the guy readers out there, and it's that awkward and shaming moment when you must surrender your will and dignity to a stranger, and stop and ask directions? Maybe it's that awkward moment when you know a really long and impressive word, just not when you're trying to use it in a sentence? All you can do is sit there and say "oh-god-I-know-this-I-know-this". Maybe you've ended up at a school reunion, and you're trying to think of a good reason why you're not president of the world yet? I mean, you'll get round to it eventually, only you have other made-up projects in the way. All very difficult things. However, I've managed to claim victory over a challenge that fate itself seemed doggedly determined to thwart me at every turn, to defeat me with awkward timing, and to lure me into a false sense of security. Yes, finally I can say: I've received my eye-fone!

It's sitting next to me in it's new leather flippy-toppy case, being all eye-foney, and beeping occasionally just to say hello. I've spent all of yesterday getting used to pressing buttons, and downloading all sorts of fancy apps. However, it was almost not to be. You see, Tesco's occasionally come over all festive and decided "ah to hell with it, let's double the value of those clubcard voucher thingys we always send out". So they did. Now, when I heard of such unbridled generosity, I gathered up all of my voucher thingys, while waiting for the rest to arrive via the post-person. I thought I'd ask Tescos if they have any, they did, and can they be so good as to "lose" one until my voucher thingys arrive. They said they can't (boo) but they weren't selling them fast so they should still have stock (yay). This was all good, so I became a patient Max until they arrived. So, after scooping up all my thingys, I drove off to Tescos, as happy as the Daily Mail isn't. Guess what? Correctamundo, they'd sold out of eye-fones! Just to top it off, not only were all the stores around where I live sold out, but they weren't getting any more stock in! Even online was sold out! Many a disappointed sigh was heard before I headed off, defeated.

However, a few days later while wandering around Cambridge, I decided that actually, Tesco's sell food, food that I want to buy, and I will indeed use my vouchers on this novel idea, and grab my new toy the old fashioned way. So, like a good shopper, I wandered around all the shops and got all the details on all their deals. As soon as I got bored of this, I skipped to the guys who had the best deal at the time; 3. So, I signed very excitedly on the dotted line, confirmed that I was me and not someone else who wasn't me, I had me an eye-fone! Hurrah! Fast-forward to getting home, and I felt all 5 years-old again! I unwrapped all the bits and put the sim card in... and my face dropped! On screen, were the two hardest words in the English Language at that time: "NO SERVICE". Nothing, nada, not even outside or down the street. This made no sense as their little picture said I'd have so much signal, I'd be able to read my emails merely by thinking hard enough, however it turns out that their colourful representation of signal coverage is an "approximation" of "what they want the signal to be like", which in other words, is as accurate as me throwing tins of paint at a map and going "right that's my work done, I'm going down the pub". Gutted didn't even cover it. 

So, after moping around for a while, I decided to take it back. But, never mind, eh! There were other shops around with similar deals so I'll go home with a working, fully signalled toy. O2 were next on my list, and their deal was almost identical to 3's. However, I had to leave this one sad-faced as well, as fate had once again thought it funny as hell to mess up my day. What was wrong this time? Busy store? Out of stock? Waiting period? No, nothing as easy as that... it was a total nationwide system failure, so they couldn't sign anyone up! Really? It was like those occasions when "They", turn up. "They" are that secret society of drivers that conspire to get in your way when you're late. I went to Orange and T-Mobile, but they were much more expensive than the other two. I even went to one of those carphones-4-your-warehouse places, but they had an offer that was (I'm not kidding) twice as expensive per month, half the call/text/data bits, and the cost of the phone was more than if I went to Apple and bought it myself. They should have inserted a "punch in the face" in the package for all the good it does. So, I sulked home again, safe in the conclusion that I will never encounter eye-fone goodness.

That is, until I went online to Tesco again, bless 'em! They'd stocked up again on all the things, and here we are now, with a working, signalled toy! Joy! I'm going to spend most of this evening playing with all the different functions on it, downloading music that has totally not been pirated in any way, using my barcode-scanner app to find the cheapest of everything in my house, and the Google-Maps directions function, so I'll never get lost on my journey from the bedroom to the kitchen ever again.

That is, knowing my luck, until an asteroid comes down and destroys nothing except the Tesco Mobile antenna. When will this happen? Let me put it this way, I'm keeping one eye out of the window.



(images credited to suphakit73 and Matt Banks)

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