Guillaume Apollinaire 1880 – 1918

Note
The third from last line, Ses rosiers et ses vêtements n’ont pas de boutons, contains an untranslateable pun. The word boutons means both “(flower) buds” and “buttons”.

The poet is referring to the fact that some religious groups disallow visible buttons on women’s dress, considering this a form of “adornment” that they eschew.

This follows on from yesterday’s post, Battery failure.

Today promised to be hot, especially by the late afternoon when the sun’s heat had had time to accumulate.

I was not looking forward to travelling on public transport with Covid-19 still active but it was either that or resign myself to using a phone that was likely to keep collapsing with a dud battery. The obvious route would have been to take the tube to Covent Garden Station which is a few yards from the Apple store. Unfortunately, this station is closed at the moment. The next option, which I adopted, was to take a bus from the Angel to King’s Cross Station, then a Piccadilly Line tube train from there to Leicester Square and to walk from Leicester Square to Covent Garden and the Apple store.

I was relieved to see that the bus had very few passengers aboard and the same for the tube train. Would it be the same for the return journey?

As I have mentioned, I used to work in Covent Garden and often used to walk to the bookshop from Leicester Square station. The walk takes about 10 minutes.

The entrance to the Apple store is under an arcade which the store is using to full advantage, having set up ribboned paths for queueing. You have to go through quite a process before being admitted but I won’t bore you with the details as this happens in many places.

Passing the cleansing routine admits you to a queue where you wait until your name is called. My nane was eventually called and I was instructed to enter and mount the famous spiral staircase to the first floor. Yet again (for about the sixth time), I was asked my name and business. It helped that an appointment had been made for me the previous evening.

My iPhone and I were attended to by a pleasant young man who gave every sign of knowing his trade and being an ace at customer relations. Once again the poor old iPhone had to go through an analytics test and eventualy the verdict was announced. There was something wrong withh the battery and it would have to be seen to. What happened next was slightly unexpected but nonetheless welcome.

For some time, there has been a small bright patch in the bottom left corner of the iPhone’s display. It wasn’t a great nuisance and I didn’t notice it for much of the time but I thought I would ask the assistant about it at an opportune moment. In the event, I didn’t manage to do so because he anticipated me. He had seen it for himself and he told me that it was defintely a fault and that they would attend to it.

What you notice about your contacts with Apple is the massive amounts of form-filling that takes place. My assistant was typing pretty well continually throughout the interview. At last he produced the Grand Schema for me to approve and sign. They were going to replace both the battery and the display. I could see that the cost of this came to £161.66 but, as he assured me, “Apple will cover it”.

That was the good news. Now came the bad news, though I cannot really fault them for this, given the late hour of my appointment. They were sorry but they could not effect the repairs this evening. I would have to come back tomorrow at noon when the joyful reunion would be enacted.

Anticipating such a possibility, I had brought my old iPhone 6 with me and my assistant cheerfully swapped over the SIM from the iPhone 8 so that, in the meantime, I could use the 6 instead.

I left the store and walked back to Leicester Square tube station. It was hot, very hot. Wearing a facemask in these conditions is extremely uncomforable because it holds the hot air you breath out against your face. (That, after all, is the point of it.)

The tube station was now more crowded than when I came. The first train to arrive was pretty full so I let it go. Another was due in 2 minutes and I hoped it would be less full. It was, so I went aboard.

At King’s Cross, I boarded a 214 bus but it too soon became crowded. Drivers are supposed to limit the number of passengers but this driver was taking everyone.
At the stop before mine, still more people crowded aboard, so I left the bus and walked the rest of the way.

Tomorrow I will have to make the journey to the Apple store again. Perhaps at midday, and on a Sunday, transport will be less crowded. Let’s hope so.

Yesterday evening, while I was reading a book on my iPhone, the device suddenly went dark. It was as if I had switched it off – which I had not done – except that it did not respond to any attempts to switch it back on. After a while, the Apple logo appeared briefly, white on black, and then disappeared.

The only action I could think to take was to put the phone on charge. It responded to this by showing the charging image with a red indicator meaning that the phone had closed down because it was out of power.

This was anomalous, to say the least, because I had not used it all that much before the shut-down occurred. Clearly, something was not right.

I had bought the iPhone 8 last October because my iPhone 6, which had given years of good service, was itself showing signs of battery trouble. The battery had started running down very quickly to the point where when I went out, I would take a backup battery with me and keep it plugged into the phone. Then came the catastrophic battery failures when the phone would unpredictably lose power completely and need to be recharged before it could be used.

There were two solutions to this dilemma. I could have a new battery fitted or I could buy a new phone. Buying a battery would be cheaper and would give me a few more years of use.

There was another problem, however. We had now reached version 12 of iOs, the iPhone’s operating system, with iOs 13 being distributed. Version 12, though, was the last version that the iPhone 6 was capable of receiving. Yes, updates to 12 would be issued for a while but eventually these too would cease and the phone would be stuck in a technological time warp. It seemed preferable to buy a new phone which would have several years of iOs updates ahead of it.

By now, iPhone evolution had reached iPhone 11 which, by all accounts, was a wonderful piece of work but it came at a price commensurate with its wonderfulness. I therefore looked at the prices of earlier models and plumped for the iPhone 8 which was much cheaper and still had a few years of updates ahead of it. Tigger also had an iPhone 8 and there is a definite advantage in both of us having the same model, whether of phone or computer, as we can share tips and often solve one another’s problems.

Thus it was that I took delivery of a new iPhone 8 and pensioned off the iPhone 6, thinking that my troubles were at an end. Indeed, it was so… until today.

Having recharged my iPhone 8, I saw that it had received a message. This informed me that:

Your battery’s health is significantly
degraded. An Apple Authorized Service
Provider can replace the battery to restore
full performance and capacity.

Well, at least I now knew for certain what the problem was and that I would have to have it seen to. This was not the end of techical wonders, however. Beneath the above cited message, in blue, was the phrase “More about service options…” I clicked this.

This opened a page in Safari displaying in big letters the question “How would you like to get help?” Beaneath were several choices but the ones which caught my attention were those offering contact with an adviser by phone or by chat. It was now late in the evening and for phone contact I would have to “schedule” a call, which meant that someone would call me at a future agreed time. Inspection showed that this would not be for several days. For Chat, however, the indication read “Wait time: 5 minutes or less”. I thereforefor opted for Chat.

Before doing any of this, I had looked into the settings and recovered the phone’s serial number as I guessed I would need to identify the phone at some point. It turned out that I was right. Before chat starts, you have to enter your first and last names, your email address and the phone’s serial number or IMEI.

I found myself chatting to someone called Brooke. I outlined the problem to Brooke who said that, first, we needed to do a diagonostic test. She told me to go to Settings>Privacy>Analytics and Improvements and to click on Start Diagnostics and follow the on-screen prompts..

If, being curious, you try to follow the above path on your own phone, you will not find that last item, Start Diagnostics. That popped up only when I reached it and I think it must be triggered from Apple’s end.

First, there is a message asking whether you agree to share data with Apple to which you can answer yes or no. I answered yes and there appeared a progress bar. The process lasted about two minutes. This, however, was where I ran into a problem. It was my own fault, not Apple’s, and I feel shamefaced about it but will tell you about it nonetheless.

I now tried to return to chat but I couldn’t find it. I was labouring under the misapprehension that the chat screen was somewhere inside the Settings app when it was in fact in Safari (as noted above). I ended up deleting all open windows, including Safari, and therefore lost my chat connection. A lot of swearing ensued!

I eventually calmed down enough to have another try at initiating Chat. For some reason, it would not work. I decided to give up for now and to try again in the morning.

We watched a film on Netflix and then I went to bed. Lying in bed, instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to sleep, I decided to have another try at Chat. Having realized where the chat screen actually was, I was confident that I could, if necessary, do the necessary in Settings and then find my way back to Chat.

Once more I entered my first name, last name and iPhone serial number and… I found myself chatting to Hameed. I explained how I had “lost” the previous chat and enquired whether the diagonostics had reached them. He confirmed that they had. He then asked whether any of the Apple stores near me were open. I said that I did not know and suggested that he could check, giving the name of our preferred store.

He checked, found that it was open and made me an appointment for today (Saturday) at 5:05 pm.

Later today, then, I shall don my facemask and take the tube to the Apple Store and there present myself and my suffering iPhone for their ministrations. The phone is still under warranty and so the repair should not cost me anything.

I shall recount the sequel of this adventure later.

In conclusion, here is a tip in case you find yourself in a similar situation. The serial number is a 12-character string of letters and digits (the IMEI is even longer), not easy to remember or to type in during chat. I therefore copied it to Notes, and when it was required, copy/pasted it into the window. That made typing it easier and avoided mistakes.

What determines how hot or cold you feel? My logical mind would like to believe that the ambient temperature decides it, but long experience shows it isn’t so. At home, we talk, for instance, about a “cold 19 degrees” or a “warm 19 degrees”, that is, you can feel warm one day and cold the next even though the temperature is the same on both occasions. A few days ago, the outdoor temperature stood at 20°C and I felt distinctly chilly whereas today it was a “baking hot 20 degrees”, perhaps because the sun was shining from a almost cloudless sky.

Chapel Market

We had business to conduct at a post office and, fortunately, there is now one such in Chapel Market. I don’t know when it arrived but it did and that’s all that matters.

The market itself was fairly busy, about average for a weekday, perhaps. There is now a fishmonger’s shop in the street and near it was a fish stall. Both if them stank if dead fish and I held my breath each time I had to pass by them.

I’m not particularly finicky about smells but since adopting vegetarianism many decades ago, I find the smell of meat and dead fish quite repellent. If meat eaters had the same response as I do to “edible corpses”, then they, too, would become vegetarian on the instant.

Amwell Street

Our next port of call was Amwell Street, named after Amwell in Hertfordshire which, with nearby Chadwell, lies at the source of the New River. From our explorations during lockdown, I have come to know the street better than ever before and therefore have become fond of it.

I called in at King’s Chemist’s while Tigger queued at Middleton’s deli.

Pulling down the shades

It was coming up to 10am now and the streets were divided between sunlit and shadowed regions. It was still comfortable in the shade but already too warm in direct sunlight. Even though this corner shop was still in shadow, the shopkeeper was pulling down the shades in anticipation of the shop becoming sunlit later.

Coffee in hand, we went straight home where we shall probably spend the rest of the day in the breeze from the electric fans.

Desk fan

I have this neat electric fan on my desk. It’s not hugely powerful but it’s good enough. Hitherto, I have turned it to point at my face but recently I have noticed that in this unusually hot weather, my PC becomes quite warm, so much so that parts of the metal become almost too hot to touch. I have therefore turned the fan to blow downwards across the keyboard area on the grounds that the computer needs it more than I do! It seems to have worked and the computer is now much cooler.

Tigger’s employers are initiating a phased return to work and this week Tigger is going in to the office today (Monday) and tomorrow. Next week may bring a different arrangement. What the final pattern of attendance will be remains to be seen.

As I write this, then, I am, in the words of the title, “home alone”, a rather novel experience after the last few months during which I have enjoyed the continuous presence and companionship of the one I love.

Does it feel strange? Yes, it does. Do I feel lonely? Happily, no, because I know we will meet up later and I find that solitude is bearable as long as you know that it will last for only a limited time. Tigger will send me a text when she leaves work and again when her bus reaches the Old Street Roundabout. That will enable me to go out and meet her at Jusaka. There, she can tell me about her day at work over coffee.

———-

At 1:30 pm my phone rang. It was Tigger calling from work to see how I was doing. Nice surprise!

———-

I managed to keep myself occupied during the day, always with my eye on the clock, so as not to miss the important time of 5 pm. This duly came and with it a text from Tigger, saying she was on the way to the bus.

We continued to keep in touch (aren’t modern communications wonderful? 🙂 ) as Tigger wended her way towards the Angel. When she reached Old Street I set out to meet her. There was surprisingly little traffic on the roads for the time of day (this ought to have been the rush hour…) and so the bus and I reached the stop at more or less the same moment.

Joyous reunion! 🙂

We crossed the road to Jusaka and had our coffee. Then we made our way home. Tomorrow’s schedule will be the same as today’s.

I cannot say that I feel as though “normality” has resumed. The feeling is more of this being an imitation of normality which, I suppose it is.

Whether the world will ever return to what we once considered normal seems uncertain, according to today’s briefing by the Director-General of the WHO which contained this statement: “However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be.” In other words, there is as yet no evidence that an effective vaccine has been developed or even that one can be developed. As we are living now may be how we must live for the foreseeable future.