Gym Dangers

On Monday, in what must have been a fairly comical moment in itself, I was on the cross-trainer in the gym. As usual, I had moved beyond the joys of perspiration and was firmly into the phase to which I refer fondly as ‘Drenched’. As Madonna’s Like A Prayer moved into its second verse, I became aware that my energy levels were flagging somewhat and, preferring to blame my sluggishness on the Queen of Pop rather than my own risible fitness levels, decided to fast forward the track. I reached down to the iPod which was nestled in the cross-trainer’s integral cup holder, but – horrors – instead of seamlessly spinning on to the next upbeat number, I managed to become manually tangled in my headphones wire, wrenching my white rectangular friend out of its holster and sending it clattering to the floor between the footrests, as I accelerated towards the angina-inducing peaks of Workout Level 24.

Breathless and pouring sweat in an Amazonian fashion, I cantered onto solid ground as quickly as I could and scooped up my iPod from its final resting place beneath the cross-trainer. Nervous about potential injuries following the not-insubstantial fall, I gingerly replugged in my headphones and was relieved to hear Madge warbling away as before. Resuming my position on the exercise machine, I recommenced my workout – but just a few moments later and without warning, Like A Prayer stopped, mid-middle eight, and no amount of frantic button pressing in any number of desperate combinations would coax it back into action.

Back at home, the hated grumpy file symbol had appeared on my screen and, following the instructions on the Apple website, I attempted to ‘restore’ my iPod. Sadly this option was forbidden to me: my computer informed me that it was experiencing Error 1418 and was unable to proceed. Feeling outwitted and guilty, I began the grieving process for my little aural wonder. And things looked no better when, on Tuesday night, Simon found a website called www.1418hell.com. This explained that my error message was a cumbersome problem suffered by thousands of iPod owners that mean old Apple was refusing to fix. Clearly, the time had come to start saving for a new pod.

But then, at 5am yesterday morning, my previously mute iPod began emitting a series of random beeps. When my consciousness finally came to me around an hour later, I took a look at the screen, realised the unit was low on battery and plugged it in to the mains. And immediately, miraculously, normality was restored. The music of the spheres tinkled merrily above me and as I commuted into work today, Bob Dylan warbling away in my ears, I felt unmistakeably lucky to have survived this example of my own carelessness without the need to fork out for a new machine and grateful to have been handed a(nother) splendid excuse to steer clear of the cross-trainer for the time being.