How I incurred the wrath of my iPhone

As I sat down to dinner in a lovely old country pub my reservation was cancelled by my iPhone, which was having a tantrum.

The owner of this restaurant was serving us with a smile, we had been shown to our table, drinks and menus had been brought. But the buzzing lump of metal in my bag was adamant this was not happening.

I was experiencing one of those moments where reality splits into two: the one you are experiencing and the one your phone claims you are.

A lot of people obediently accept the phone’s version no matter what. This is presumably why drivers follow their satnavs into garden walls, or swerve along the motorway looking at pictures of dogs on Facebook.

‘It’s coming up on the left,’ said my friend as we were looking for a farm shop not long ago. She was glued to her iPad in the passenger seat. ‘It’s here,’ I said, turning right into the entrance. ‘No, no, it’s on the left further on!’ she insisted. She was on Google Earth or something similar, looking at what I was looking at through the window on a screen, which she insisted was more reliable.

She was still staring at her iPad and arguing that the farm shop could not be where it was as I parked and went inside.

Because I am a mad conspiracy theorist who does not trust technology more than the actual flesh and blood reality I can see around me, I ignored my phone as it badgered me in this restaurant.

The reason for its tantrum, I believe, was something to do with me disobeying it by refusing to activate Do Not Disturb.