My friend i-pod

I had the back to work fear last night, which makes no sense as I’ve worked throughout Christmas and New Year.

I was at a gig last night but left at a reasonable hour and was all tucked by 12- that should have left me reasonably tired but able to get up at 7am without trouble (given that I didn’t get up until… well it was after the sun was over the yard arm). Lo at 2.41am I was wide awake. I am not normally a bad sleeper except for the fact I don’t like to go to bed too early- and I am being supportive and have given up caffeine with my housemate so am totally lacking in jitters- so none of this makes sense.

I did the usual thing of trying to sleep for half an hour that never works. Then I turned to my beloved i-pod. By day my i-pod and I walk to and from work and all over London with music on- mostly this is bliss because at work I’m afraid I do not get to choose the music and while I like to think I will try anything really I don’t like everything - and all but the very best songs suffer from being played once an hour, every hour (which is what middle of the road FM do to the tolerable songs they play). By night I catch up with podcasts and often find myself asleep with the headphones wrapped around me- sometimes rather alarmingly wrapped around my neck.

Last night at 4am when I woke up to switch Andrew Marr off (for I didn’t realise the i-pod was stuck on replay) I thought about what I would have done without the little thing. Sure I could have read for a bit but there is nothing like being talked to sleep. In a world where I noticed it was a blessing to turn off phones, computers and all of that over Christmas the i-pod is a friendly technology which doesn’t cause me stress but assists me and comforts me. I don’t work for apple and they have never given me anything for free and am certain I would feel the same about any MP3 player but I felt genuine warmth for the little machine last night.