iPhone...what iPhone

Dateline Friday July 11th. The day that rabid PR executives worldwide had decreed to be known as I-day, or iPhone-day, or perhaps frI-day. Who knows. Whatever, big business had successfully managed to smuggle enough mind altering chemicals into my coffee to ensure that I would decide to join the day one gang and become one of the iPhoned.

So how did I do. Initial efforts had gone poorly, very poorly. As a result of registering my interest with )2 I was the luck recipient of an e-mail instructing me to click on a link. Checking my content filter were set to "stun" I clicked. A mere hour had elapsed since receipt of the mail, but this proved to be too long. The phone that makes Jesus look like an amateur magician was sold out online. Already. It looked like it was going to be a store vist. Me in an actual Apple line. Would there be mimes to entertain us. Would we bond with fellow line travellers, making friends for ever, peopl ewho when we mailed each other with our phones would look at the little signature "sent from my iPhone" and smile with warm rememberance?

A totally fake excuse of collecting some t-shirsts meant that I had a reason to head from Cirencester to Cheltenham, via the girls school. Luckily for me the girls are great gymnasts so I didn't actually have to stop the car, simply eject them on the move in the general direction of school. The road to Cheltenham is narrow and twisty, and had my car been fitted with TOW rockets or machine guns would have been littered with the burning shells of cars that were driving just. too. slowly. Still 9.30 was a good time to getr in line.

The quick walk from car to O2 shop took me past the Carphone Warehouse outlet, where a mini queue was already in place, should I divert. No. there it was the holy grail. Some red police tape, a few cones and... the queue. A nice lady even came out, counted us and pronounced all of us in the line as blessed, well as blessed as people who are denied 16Gb phones because they only had 8Gb models in stock could be.

But, what cruel fate was this. Another, not nearly so nice lady asking if any of us were business customers. Me!! I'm an importnat business customer, in line for two handsets!! Me!! No! No!! NO!!! "I'm sorry sir, we can't process business customers today. We've made this totally arbitary decision, sorry!"

And that was that. The scant solace of my t0shirt collection failed to remake my morning. O2 are now out of stock for weeks, but the Cirencester Carphone Warehouse is gettng more in on Tuesday so it looks like a plan B is scheduled for then.

Updates on Tuesday.