Why is it in Devon?

My phone buzzed late on a Friday, my face lit up as I took in the message; “Hi Chris, did you get my email?”. I did get the email but “sorry my laptop’s in Devon” I replied. Their confusion was palpable in the “Eh?” I got thrown back. Other than Hibs getting drawn with Hearts in the Scottish cup tie by what looked like a drunken Rod Stewart, the only other exciting thing to happen to me in the past week was the millennial equivalent of replacing a car tyre. Taking my MacBook to get fixed. After a morning of using it, I took it from one (glamorous) location to an (equally glamorous) location across town, opened it up and I was met with a blank screen, well not entirely, there was a folder with a question mark flashing at me. Mocking me. 

I had no idea what it meant, I come from a history of Windows computers, the strongest relationship i'd had with Apple was a brief fling in 2010 where I dated an iPad. It was a loving relationship, the kind you show off in public hoping it makes the papers but in the end meaningless and we agreed to part ways once I met a newer model, an iPhone.A Mac is an emotional investment, like a first child (maybe not exactly like that) and up until this point it had given me no bother. Still the folder flashed. I did everything I could with my own knowledge and understanding but I bit down hard on the bullet and gave Ian from the Apple helpline a call. Ian was nice, he said he was in ‘the north east’ and ‘happy to help’. He had this fun quirk where whenever you asked him something he’d pause and say ‘ok, so…’ with an upper inflection. He did this every time without fail and it became a sort of sport to see how many times I could get him to say it. There were periods of waiting during the call that I’d take advantage of and play another round of the ‘Ok, so…’ game. 

In the end Ian from the north east was nice but didn’t solve my problem so he booked my laptop into the next available Genius bar appointment in Scotland which thankfully was in Stirling that day. I made a move and got the train from Glasgow and the west to the Forth Valley, a journey that is actually quite picturesque if you don’t look out of the window passing Larbert.*

I’d never seen a shopping centre so quiet. Yea it was a weekday but this place was dead. I wandered down the centre of the tall shop-lined corridor the smells of Lush and Thorntons competing with each or for priority in my nose (Lush was winning).

Glass fronted and teeming with twenty year old cool geeks, I stepped into the white walled chapel of Apple. It’s wasn’t an official Apple shop but they have ‘registered traders’ who can look at your device. Kind of in the same way that you can get a Costa Coffee from a vending machine at service stations. Yea it’s technically a Costa but not really.

The young guy behind the counter was cool. I am not. He took one look at the record of my call with Ian, opened up my laptop and confirmed what we both already knew. “Yea, its an issue with the hard drive, dude, we’ll need to send it away to get looked at”. I pathetically asked If there was anything, anything else he could do that day, “Not really bro… we could run diagnostics but it’ll probably show up the same issue”. It did. 

There was nothing else for it, It had to be sent away. I did discuss and look at other options but this was the quickest and potentially cheapest afforded to me. Enquiring where they sent the ill and infirm computers he told me; “Exeter bro”. ‘Don't call me bro' I thought, you’re sending my laptop to Devon, have some respect. In hindsight this was a little dramatic. He stuck a barcode to the lid and put it in a clear plastic bag reminiscent of a body bag and that was the last I saw of it... Until almost exactly a week later when it came back and there was no real problem just a bad cable that was cheap to fix. The moral of the story is. It’s just a laptop. Calm down dear. 

*Obviously a joke, I’m from Falkirk I have no legroom to take the proverbial out of Larbert. That line would have worked equally well if I’d have said: 

"A  journey that is actually quite picturesque if you don’t look out of the window passing Camelon.”

or

"A journey that is actually quite picturesque if you don’t look out of the window passing Falkirk.”

or

"A journey that is actually quite picturesque if you don’t look out of the window passing Lenzie."

Alex Knight