My shadow needs a break

Don’t tell my phone this, but I’m sick of the sight of it. It’s already groaning with apps, and I don’t have the heart to tell Phone I’m considering downloading the Covid-19 tracer app. Talk about the straw that could break the camel Phone’s app back.

If I could just slip this latest app in and hide it behind the others, maybe Phone wouldn’t notice. Phone is looking pretty exhausted. Its screen has sustained two cracks and there are grooves across its surface from fingers wearing a well-trodden path constantly accessing favoured apps.

Recently Phone objected to being rubbed down with industrial-strength hand sanitiser after outings, even if this protects its scaly surface from becoming a septic nesting ground for dead skin cells still floating round the staycation abode.

Tensions between us are running high. But what can you do when you’re in a co-dependant relationship with something you neurotically think you can’t go anywhere without?

Phone might be getting a bit run down from overuse, but I can’t bear to be without it. It’s my shadow.

I trust it more than using the collective pen in shops and cafes. Isn’t leaving your address, email and phone number exposed for all the world to see, an invitation to home invasion?

Like all long-term relationships, we’re probably just going through a rough patch, and we should just ride it out. Or maybe, I should consider spicing up our relationship by pretending to be someone else. It’s all about identity, or loss of it.

The other day, when we went for a walk, I bent down to pick up a giant autumn leaf, which masklike, I playfully put over my mouth and nose. This made Phone vibrate, causing me to wonder if that was a phone in my pocket, or was it just happy to see the new me.

Isuppose I should be grateful for all it’s done for its mistress during lockdown. It had to endure endless calls to all and sundry for extended lengths of time. And it let me order a bunch of online stuff I was convinced I absolutely had to have.

Such as? A phone stand, a phone enlarger, and something for the lady of the house, a must-have regulation red Handmaid’s Tale costume complete with bonnet every decent thinking woman can wear to a protest march.

Forgive me for not sounding like myself. I blame the re-entry shock into society, and the hydroxychloroquine tablets I’ve been taking. The Donald suggested I try them out.

What have you got to lose? Trump admitted at a press conference that he’d been taking the pills as a prophylactic against the Covid-19 running rife in the White House.

‘‘I’m taking it. I’m taking it now!‘‘ he riffed to the press.

The president said he would’ve told the stunned journalist pack sooner, only they hadn’t asked him. Silly fake news hacks. It was their fault for not bothering to ask.

This should give the press corps licence to ask the president if he has ever taken, or is taking, hmmm let’s see – Adderall, benzodiazepine, Valium or cocaine, the drugs he’s YouTuberumoured to have consumed during his time on The Apprentice.

I’m not a doctor, but if I was to hazard a guess what The Donald was on, I’d say it was something trippy.

Watching Trump unravel is both ‘‘surreal and puzzling’’, the words Dr Ashley Bloomfield used to describe what it is like to be on the receiving end of mass citizen adulation.

I’m not really taking hydroxychloroquine. It’s so last millennium.