All True at the Time of Writing...

Last night I left my phone in a taxi. I know. I'm ridiculous. 

Yeahhh. That's how it was.

I'd had a lovely evening with friends, visited three bars and a restaurant, then got a taxi home. As soon as I walked into the house I realised I didn't have it. For a nervous half hour, I worried, sweated, and mentally retraced my steps. Using another phone, I contacted the restaurant and left my email, rang my friend in the taxi to check if it was there, and tried to get in touch with the last bar I'd been in. It was at that point my friend in the taxi rang back. It had been on the floor, unlit and elusive until he'd got out. It was found. Panic over.

A dramatic reconstruction of my phone
speeding off into the night. In New York.

As horror stories go, it's not really up there, is it? The Mystery of Nicky's Lost Phone is hardly going to sell out cinemas. Nor would the paperback hit the best seller lists. It's just one of those things that happens. And in a few hours, there'll be a happy conclusion to the narrative when I meet my friend and am reunited with my phone once more.

But the past twelve hours - for indeed that's how long my phone and I have been apart - has been challenging. Once the fear of having lost the thing went away, the practical realities kicked in. I didn't have an alarm clock. I was unable to add the food I'd eaten to my WW app. I couldn't fall asleep to Netflix. Straight away - well at least within an hour of being phoneless - my routine was all over the place. 

Don't say you don't miss it.

I want to be better than this. I don't want my world to feel empty and frightening because I've lost a piece of technology. A piece of technology I grew up without, managing perfectly well until my mid-twenties when I got my first Nokia. And yet, as I've outlined before, phones are more than phones. Lives are organised through apps. Work priorities, friendships contact groups, banking - it's all there. Until the time it's not. It's in a taxi and you can't set an alarm.

This is all I can do.

So, how will I cope for the rest of the day? Well, it's not as facetious a question as it sounds. I'm genuinely not being sarky. I have to rethink a few things. My work To Do list was on the phone. I can't remember all the things I'd planned to box off so I feel a bit untethered. My shopping list for Tesco was also on there. I'll have to spend sometime recalling that - and because I think I'm Nigella, it was full of random and specific ingredients rather than just 'pies'. It'll take some time. Then there's the family WhatsApp group. They won't have even clocked my absence. Instead, when I get my phone back, I'll have 9675 messages, focusing on banter. Plus funny vids of the Niece and Neph. Catching up with all that will fill an evening, no mess.

The good news, however, is that the top priorities for today have already sorted themselves out. My main To Do list - the one that starts with 'Get up' and  'Drink tea' - had two main tasks to complete. These were 'Think of blog topic' and 'Write blog'. I can now tick those off my list. My paper list. All I need to do is find a pen.

Have a lovely week, folks.