A smug iPhone user writes
Giles Turnbull
make the most of. Twitter does a good job of finding companions to
meet and old friends to catch up with. Now all I need is to find them.
I stroll down Old Street, smug and confident that my shiny iPhone 3G
will guide me to the right place. I don't need a paper A-Z anymore. I
am nerdo king, and I can find my way to anywhere by wireless magic.
My friends invited me to meet them at 100 City Road, but emerging from
Old Street tube I start striding down Old Street, which intersects
City Road here. I am still smug and confident. And now, wrong.
I count down as I stroll. 188 Old Street, an old building ripe for
redevelopment. A few doors down, an office block used by the Royal
Mail for something or other. Then a row of shops, a cafe, and finally,
100 Old Street.
It's a sex shop.
Several thoughts fly through my mind:
- this is an initiation rite, and everyone who is invited here is
given this address as a joke
- my friends really are here, in a room above the sex shop. I look up
at dirty windows and shabby curtains. I am doubtful
Somewhat less smug now, but still confident, I pull out the iPhone. In
seconds, it will tell me where I need to be. But despite the glowing
"3G" icon in what passes for a Menu Bar on the iPhone, nothing's
happening. Safari won't take me to any web pages. Twitterrific won't
take me to Twitter. Mail won't even fetch my mail. I'm standing
outside a sex shop in East London with an expensive phone - looking, I
might add - *extremely* shifty - and I'm completely bloody lost.
This is the moment where I stop feeling smug, and start feeling a
little bit stupid.
I stick the useless phone in my pocket and start walking back the way
I came. Perhaps it wasn't 100 Old Street after all. Perhaps it was a
different 100.
Turns out it was.
In the different 100, there's a cup of tea in a pantone mug waiting
for me, and never before has a cup of tea in a pantone mug been so
welcome, and tasted so good.