Intrepid reporter receives first iPad injury

I believe I may have Britain’s first iPad injury. It’s not that I dropped it on my big toe, it’s due to isolation.

I shall explain. We are having a half-term break in the middle of nowhere. Not Timbuctoo, or Ulan Bator, although, to be honest, they could be bustling metropolises for all I know. We are in Cornwall, somewhere called Herodsfoot is the nearest town. It’s the kind of place where the closest convenience store is a five-mile drive to Pelynt, and the Cornish cornershop doesn’t stock cornichons. Ironically, it does have every sort of mobile phone SIM card you can imagine. I say this is ironic because there is no mobile signal anywhere. Yesterday lunchtime we went to a pub called the The Punch Bowl, famed for being haunted by a demonic black cock. It was the sort of pub where the landlady has post-axial hexadactyly, and girls bother to put on false eyelashes for dinner with their brother. I asked where the nearest place to get signal was. “Troy the village green,” came the reply. “It’s where ee locarls go to get them there signal.” Apparently it even had a bench. It did, but no 02 or Vodafone connection.

Now, in principle, having a holiday away from all that technology and stress, staying in a log cabin (with ensuites, it’s a step up from a caravan), sounds ideal. No phone messages, no emails. Just beautiful forest, millpond and ducks, and sunbathing on the verandah. Except, as you drive to the bright lights of - ensuite jokes on a picture postcard please - Looe, intermittent signal pushes emails and answerphone messages through. By the time you stop the car, you’ve got a pile of urgent mail messages about delicate financial matters, and answerphone calls about arranging to scan a VIP - OK a Norwich player, but they are back in the Championship next season - at the weekend. Needless to say, wherever you’ve stopped, there’s no bleeding signal again.

This makes for a frustrating game of telephone and/or email tag, where trying to achieve anything is about as easy as reporting an MRI by pigeon post. So much for work. Yes, I do understand it’s a holiday, but I get bored if I don’t work on holiday. With the option of working removed, I have to find something else to do. Cue the knitting and the books. I had taken the precaution of downloading a few detective novels onto the iPad. Classic serial killer stuff. Yesterday I ploughed through a whole tome, flicking the pages across the screen with my thumb. This morning I woke up with terrible synovitis in the CMC joint of my thumb. IPad injury number one. A few doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol later, I have decided to cut out the relaxing crap for the day, and write my blog anyway.

I’ve perched the iPad dock on top of an upturned waste bin, as it’s the only way I can get close enough to a socket to write at a comfortable-ish level. No doubt this will produce some new injury for tomorrow.

Tonight, your intrepid South West correspondent is going to drive all the way to Polperro to file her copy. I can’t wait to get back to London.

Sent from my iPad!

(Complete a Hospital Dr survey to win a new iPad - Ed.)