R.I.P. MY LAPTOP
We'll always have the jumbo gyoza
Last month I started a lovely writing job for which I will be paid £1000. The first meeting was in the BFI Café on the Southbank. Within 2 minutes of arriving, I knocked an entire flat white onto my keyboard. This cost me £1000. And that was just for the central London coffee! I’m joking, it was because I got extorted by Apple.
I’ll level with you: I spill coffee on my laptop all the time. The only keyboard splashed more regularly with hot fluid is in a teenage boy’s bedroom. Because of this, I have perfected a series of balletic movements to stop spilled coffee reaching the logic board of my computer. First I dab it with tissue, careful not to apply any pressure which would push the coffee under the keys. Then I flip the laptop upside down so any remaining liquid drips out, usually onto my own trousers, which are already coffee-stained, because of who I am. Computer: saved. What little dignity I have: obliterated.
On this occassion, as in my 15 prior years of clumsy laptop ownership, the perilous dance I choreograph between plant milk and circuitboard seemed to have been a success.
But at 5pm, an ominous black bar appeared in the middle of the monitor.
This was the first computer I’d bought in 10 years, proudly purchased with a script fee in 2024. It was the largest expense of my professional life. Also for the first time in a decade, I did not have contents insurance, because production companies are extremely slow at paying the money they owe writers, and it had fallen to the bottom of a list of more urgent bills. So when the black bar appeared on my screen, my first thought was: “This is ok. I can simply ignore the obelisk of death.”
Unfortunately, 2 minutes later, a second black bar appeared. Then another. Then another. “This is still ok,” I told myself. “I can work in between the bars. It’ll be like I’m typing a document from prison. Many great works were composed in prison. Maybe I can write the next 120 Days of Sodom. Yes! That’ll work as a sitcom.”
30 seconds later, an enormous psychedelic flashing strip of green and pink appeared between two of the bars. This was, admittedly, harder to ignore. I have my limits. Even the Marquis De Sade II can’t write from disco jail.
The longer I had the computer open, the more the pattens spread. When I arrived home, my partner Jon informed me, failing to conceal his panic, that this meant the components were actively becoming more corroded, and I should turn the computer off as soon as possible to try and stop the damage.
Next followed a frantic 5 minutes pulling irreplaceable photos off the computer as deadly glitch patterns spread over the screen. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to sort the data I was copying to a hard drive, so most of the photos I “saved” turned out to be trash. For example: 20 pictures of a novelty “jumbo gyoza” sold in a Tokyo restaurant.
I’m going to Tokyo next month for work (more on that when I’m allowed to say!), and I’ve been telling extremely offline Jon that I’m going to waste the whole trip by queuing up to eat “viral food” every meal. This makes him really annoyed, so I send him pictures of the jumbo gyoza up to 10 times a day. I am pretty sure he’s going to read this, so I’ve included another one below:
Anyway. The next day I went to the Apple Store, where a man with an iPad assured me that everything was fucked and my life was over.
“If you use it for work, you really should have it insured,” said the Apple Store “genius”.
“I am aware of that,” replied the Not Pouring Hot Milk Into The Keyboard “genius.”
I handed over my laptop, worried about my documents, but also about the precious stickers on the lid, especially my prized David Cronenberg Crash (1996) sticker:
And this prescient quote from The Terror (2018):
I suspect that if I hadn’t put this sticker on the computer, it would still be working.
Once Apple had left the components to corrode for a week, I received notification that they had inspected the computer and it no longer switched on. After a week of the hard drive sitting in a caffeinated pond? No way!
At this point I got an email saying that if I didn’t pay £1000, Apple would simply destroy the laptop and not return it to me. This seemed illegal, but they also had my laptop with all my script drafts on it, and my Crash sticker. So I paid up. Apple had sent me a photo of my laptop tied to a chair with a copy of today’s paper to show it was still alive, and I’d handed over a suitcase of cash to the mob.
Fast-forward an interminable two weeks. I picked up the computer to find that, after all the threats: they had simply replaced the entire computer.
My files were gone. My stickers were gone. All I had left was the jumbo gyoza.
Hoping to make me feel better, and distract me from sending him pictures of the jumbo gyoza, Jon looked up where I could get a replacement Crash sticker. One hour later we were in the BFI shop, next to the BFI cafe, picking out Cronenberg stickers.
“Would you like to get a coffee from the cafe while we are here?” said Jon.
“No thanks.” I replied. “I can’t afford it.”
If you enjoyed this piece, please, god, donate to my Ko-Fi. But fair warning: I may spend it on the jumbo gyoza.
Can being a prick on a videogame make me more assertive in real life? Find out here:
I want to hate police procedurals, so why am I so obsessed with them? Find out here:
Is my neighbours spying on me actually good? Find out here:
Links to the stickers, if you want to curse your laptop too
The Terror by Luna and Cake: https://www.lunaandcakeshop.com/shop/p/the-terror-holographic-sticker-amc-the-terror-captain-crozier-james-fitzjames-hms-terror-erebus-jared-harris-tobias-menzies-fanart
Crash by Gazoo: https://shop.bfi.org.uk/david-cronenberg-a5-sticker-sheet.html