Gray’s Anatomy – I lost my iPhone! – By Richard Gray

It’s Friday again! Wow, the weeks seem to whizz past faster and faster – of course Friday’s around here mean one thing, Richard Gray’s Gray’s Anatomy column and this week is a bitter sweet recount of Richard and his escaping iPhone – don’t miss this, over to you Richard (foreword by Joanne Carter).

‘It’s every iPhone photographers nightmare – last Saturday, I lost my phone! I’d been at a music festival and had developed a small rip in my shorts, which, what with all the clambering around and stuffing things in my pockets, by the end of the day had developed into a huge hole around my upper right thigh area. But it was time to go home and in these liberal times and in the relative darkness, I didn’t expect many people to take too much offense to the occasional flash of my underwear. Nevertheless as I walked along I grasped the hole to prevent excessive embarrassment (and further ripping). But by doing this, my phone slipped out of my pocket! There was a point when I heard a “clunk” – but, in the dark and keen to get home, I didn’t think to see what it was. That was the sound of my world falling apart (I exaggerate slightly).

But can you imagine my distress? My first thought was: OMG! I have to give two iphoneography classes in a few days’ time, I’m gonna look a right muppet if I turn up without my iPhone! One of the things I was planning to talk about in my class was the importance of backing up your photos. And, having practiced what I preached, I reassured myself with the thought that all my photos were backed up to the cloud. But as an avid street snapper, I always wanted quick access to my camera app and so I had never put a password on my phone. So if someone found my phone, they would access to my emails, my Facebook, my Twitter and my Instagram. They could pretend to be me and post up an embarrassing photo of their dinner and ruin my online branding! My pulse was racing. I went to lost property but it hadn’t been handed in. I called the phone. And someone picked up. “You found my iPhone!” I said. “Yeah, man, it’s in safe hands” came the reply, in a reassuringly middle-class accent. We arranged for a handover (without ransom) and my life returned.

The moral of the story? Backup your photos and finally get round to patching up those small rips in your shorts’.