Tech problems. One good turn deserves another!

Contrary to predictions and expectations, this morning began with blue sky and sunshine but, boy, it was chilly! I selected my running route with care as so many places were likely to be very wet. According to my weather app more water was due to fall in the afternoon. By early evening, no more than a small shower.

In the late morning I set off to walk to the Tesco store in Grennfield, where my daughter planned to pick me up and carry supplies back home in her car. On my way, passing through Uppermill, I met a former work colleague from just over 40 years ago and stopped to pass the time of day.

Just as I was approaching the Tesco store, my phone pinged a message from my daughter, asking where I was, if I needed picking up yet and so on. I noticed that my phone had only 10% battery left. Even as I typed my reply to her, the phone quietly gave up the ghost. How very annoying! But my daughter is an intelligent and would assume that she should collect me more or less at the time we discussed yesterday.

Inside the store though I ran into my former colleague once again and borrowed his mobile to phone home in order to ask Phil to contact pur daughter and tell her where I was. This is what happens you see when you rely on your mobile phone. Of course I have not memorised my daughter’s mobile number (does anyone memorise mobile numbers ?) but our landline number is printed inside my head somewhere. All worked out fine.

My former colleague and I kept on crossing each other’s tracks in the supermarket, as you do. He regaled me with stories of what he has been up to: making speeches at the local historical society, organising this and that. He met my daughter and the two small people. Then as I was about to finish hunting the shelves for impossible to find items, he came looking for me. He felt like a fool, he told me, for he had managed to come shopping without any money. How unbelievably embarrassing!

So I paid for his groceries. One good turn deserves another, after all. What’s more, I know he is to be trusted to keep to his promise to post me a cheque immediately.

The business with my phone annoyed me somewhat. All I had done was take a couple of photos, all right maybe four, but that should not drain the battery. Besides, the same thing happened yesterday. My phone spent a good part of the day switched off as we were on a plane. When I switched it off it had about 80% battery. When I switched it on again to contact my daughter on our arrival in Manchester it had only 10%. Where did the other 70% go?

There is an element of mystery about this, and indeed about all things mobile phone related, that always escapes me. Anyway, my daughter, something of a technology witch, took a look at my phone, fiddled with various things in “settings” and hoped she had solved the problem. This is a generational thing - she has skills I never acquired! But then, I have other skills!

As for the phone and its battery life, only time will tell!