“I’m 500 and I can stand up without groaning. You’re only five!”
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yes, apples. It’s a very British thing to love apples and I’m sure those canny business people in California knew that when they named their products. Yes, I know the Americans are fond of apples too. It gives them comfort and makes them think of ‘Mom’s homemade apple pie’, which probably isn’t homemade at all because the apple filling has come from a can and the pastry from a packet. Not all Americans have the sense of reliability of an apple the way we do here. Their climate varies and the apple tree, not being native, but being imported by the Pilgrim fathers in the 1700s isn’t as reliable as it is here. In my youth my dad taught us about scrumping, which is basically stealing apples that hung over people's fences. That, combined with blackberries from the hedgerow made the perfect September feast when he was a child and the delight of it never quite wore off. Of all the things to have inherited, being enchanted by the prospect of free food is probably better than sticking out ears and knobbly knees.
Maybe my love of apples is why I’m overly attached to my iPhone and iPad.
Another thing I have inherited from my Dad is his MacBook. I thought it would be useful. It’s stylish and already has the music we have arranged for the Youth Orchestra on it. My laptop is at the end of its life and I like apples. It also has his iTunes on and it’s amazing how comforting listening to someone’s playlist can be when you miss them.
I managed to guess his password to get into the machine but his Apple password is more tricky. Now the machine has several icons bouncing at me and pop ups telling me I need to update things. Without the password I’m stuck.
I rang the help desk.
“You are into the machine?” the man with sunshine in his voice said. “That’s good. There’s definitely something we can do for you. It should be easy.”
He walked me through several steps and then said, “Now enter the password.”
“Yep. It’s the password I haven’t got and I can’t ask him because he is dead,” I prickled, causing the Long Suffering Husband to raise his whole eyebrow at me.
He suggested that I ask for a reset password but his email address is also closed because he’s dead.
“Be nice,” the LSH hissed.
The man was completely unfazed. It must be all the sunshine in California.
He recommended trying to guess the security questions or resetting the Apple account.
“Will I lose the music?” I fretted. “I can’t lose the music.”
My dad knew he was going to die. (*whispers* we should all know we are going to die) He’d signed a DNR eleven years before his death. He hadn’t told my mum and only told me four years before (making me promise not to tell her). I’m not sure how he thought it was going to work if there was no one to advocate for him but that’s another story. He also tried to tell me about passwords. He’d made lists of things he thought would be useful to know and left them on his computer.
“Now Ju, let me tell you about the passwords,” he said. “You know the telephone exchange numbers?”
“No Dad, I don’t.”
“Of course you do.”
He then proceeded to rattle off something he’d learnt by heart.
“Now you know them, right?” he said.
“You might as well be asking me to remember the resistor colour code.”
“You know that, right?” He asked starting me off, “Bye...”
“Bye bye Rosie off you go to Birmingham via Great Western,” I said automatically.
“See! You know it,” he gloated, proud that he had taught me something.
The problem is, I still have no idea what it means.
I wish I had committed those numbers to memory because on his file marked passwords he has, what I think is, an encrypted version of the Apple password and is probably related to the telephone exchanges where he worked. Oh, why didn’t I listen more? I could be an electrical engineer by now, or at least get into the iTunes account.
The nice Californian man brushed off his whiter than white smile and broke the news that I’d probably have to reset everything and could possibly lose all the music.
“I shouldn’t say it but could you guess his memorable questions?”
I tried.
“Why couldn’t he have mother’s maiden name?” the LSH asked, not unreasonably. “Who has first motorised vehicle?”
We found a photo of his first car on the computer but neither of us knew what he called it. I tried car and black car with no luck.
Then Jonny Appleseed directed us in how to put everything we wanted to keep on an external hard drive.
“I can stay on the phone with you until it’s all done,” he reassured.
After half an hour I had lost the will to live and started to worry about how difficult this is all going to be for our children; without our thumbprints they won’t even be able to turn the lights on or unlock the front door of our houses.
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