Phone

I awoke yesterday morning and discovered that my phone no longer worked.

Many people would enjoy the freedom that this would give them - more time to spend actually talking to loved ones and friends, more time to do real life activities and a significantly lower risk of falling down an open manhole due to staring at a small screen instead of looking where they’re going whilst walking into town.

I am not one of these people.

The first thing that struck me was I wouldn’t be able to post a photo of my Sunday morning bacon sandwich on Instagram.

I then had to resort to checking Twitter and Facebook on a PC, like some sort of fucking Neanderthal.

I went to work and had to wait until I got home to check the football scores. How did anybody used to live like this?

I wondered why my phone was broken. It was most likely the cheap replacement battery I’d bought for it on eBay. The fact that Samsung was spelt wrong on it and the fact that it sometimes emitted a crackling sound whilst charging should have alerted me to the fact that it was a dud, but did I do anything about it? No, of course not.

The customer service crowd were less than helpful, telling me that I could buy myself out of my current contract and then upgrade to a much better phone that they’d squeeze money out of me for forever. They offered to send me one in the post. That’s nice, but it wouldn’t arrive until at least Tuesday and I need to be able to check the latest Daily Mash articles in a public place before then.

A jaunt to Bridlington was required.

I discovered that despite Argos’ online claims that they had a phone in stock for a paltry £179.95, they actually didn’t when I got there.

Never mind. I headed for the EE shop.

“Can I have another one of these?” I asked, brandishing my knackered phone.

“No,” said the incredibly helpful staff member. “Why not upgrade?”

I didn’t want to upgrade really, but I saw the shiny new phone he was waving in front of my face like a hypnotist in a cheap backstreet boozer.

“Yes please. I want nothing more in the whole world.” My mouth spilled the words before I knew what was happening.

Contracts were conjured from thin air.

“Sign here, here, here, here, here and here,” he said pointing wildly at various parts of a sheet of freshly-printed small words.

I signed it without reading any of it, as is the norm.

“So it’s £70 to buy yourself out of the old contract, £30 deposit for the new phone, £6.50 for insurance and we’ll take just one of your kidneys today. We’ll only take the other one if you default on one of the payments that are now going up by £4 a month.”

I took my new phone and headed for the exit.

“And don’t forget,” the assistant called after me, “if you ever start a family you are now legally obliged to sacrifice your first born in any EE store.”

Once I was on the street, feeling dazed, I turned around and the shop had vanished.

I think I got a good deal though.