What began this morning as a normal day – blood pressure readings, ablutions, breakfast, cycling and a constitutional drive to the city for a car wash – suddenly turned to commotion. The day became instantly complicated when I noticed that my iPhone was irreversibly black. I performed a test of the device’s facility by attempting a repeat of a recent telephone call to my partner via the screen of my car’s LED screen. The call worked (so the iPhone functioned (though I couldn’t see its activity – I had plugged the iPhone into a charging cable in the car).

It wasn’t until I reappeared on home territory – and the charging did its work – that I read the communications on my iPhone. The first text message was from my partner regarding his  conversation with our US banker and emails from his surgeon. That intelligence alone invited further specificity and involvement. The second text message was from my brother-in-law’s brother, proposing a rendezvous with his co-vivante. When I tried calling him, there was no reply. I left a message. It turns out his device was malfunctioning temporarily as well. Then a third text message materialized, an invitation from my erstwhile physician for a swim at his country estate. Meanwhile, interrupting these pressing considerations was my habitual consideration of an afternoon double espresso at Equator Café. My head was swimming with alternatives!  Paradoxically the furious wind throughout the countryside correspondingly activated the poetic stratagem of “pathetic fallacy”. By this point I was nearing turmoil!