Put not thy trust . . .

This morning I was forcibly reminded of that telling phrase in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ about the “triple pillar of the world transformed into a strumpet's fool.”

Not you understand because it particularly apt to my situation at the time, but the vague idea of something major displaying signs of weakness was most appropriate.

Not everyone has the same set of priorities, of course, but everyone must surely agree that some things are self evidently essential, and without which life as we know it is not possible.

Again, not everyone (really?) has two standby ipods to leap into electronic action at the first sign of mechanical failure. Admittedly the standbys are merely 60 and 80GB respectively and added together they do not equal the so-called ‘Classic’ 160GB which is my ipod of choice.

Having purchased a few CDs over the past few weeks and downloaded them to my computer, I felt it was high time that they found their way onto my ipod. You can imagine my horror when the ipod failed to synchronize with the computer. Then failed again. And again.

You have to understand that my ipod is my first line of defence against the horrors of the television programme ‘¡Força Barça!’ which has to be heard to be believed. The format is to have six to eight people talking about Barça at the top of their voices all at the same time. In Catalan. It is the sort of torture which UNO sets up futile committees to discuss chaired by some corrupt prince from the interminable nepotistic royal Augean stable of Saudi. The ipod allows me the serenity of having waves of Romantic music (the most effective in drowning out combative voices) rather than the ranting of self appointed pundits.

My efforts to get the bloody ipod to synchronize eventually approached the Doomsday solution which was to reset the machine to the factory settings and lose all the content prior to replacing it all. I therefore wiped all the information from the ipod and started the process to replace it. It didn’t work. Unhelpful messages like “unknown error 55” (what about the other 54?) did not inspire confidence.

I now had an ipod with a capacity of 160GB with nothing on it and no way of getting stuff on it. It is at points like this that one starts thinking about where one put the guarantee; what does one do when one bought the ipod in Regent’s Street and I am now in Castelldefels – does the service guarantee carry over the ocean?

The situation called for drastic approaches; yet measured. From my many years of experience in dealing with a variety of computers I pooled my knowledge and applied my most technical solution.

I turned the computer on and off just one more time and hoped for the best.

And the best of course happened. Most of what was on my computer transferred itself to the ipod. Some of the tracks have magically multiplied and grown little red dots with exclamation marks inside them and are therefore so much dead space.

But it works and ‘¡Força Barça!’ can shout itself hoarse while I hum along with Holst.

Ahhhh!