A Musical Disaster

While travelling by minibus, groups get to talking about everything, though usually centering on health and malaria tablets. One of our more mundane, though exceptional, topics was about our music devices. Most people carry ipods; I don't. I have an ancient MP3/WMA/CD playing cd walkman that has more battery life and the potential to play more music than any smaller player. Of course, it also means carting around a mountain of cds. In the face of the obvious superiority of everyone else's devices I extolled the virtues of this monstrosity. The conversation calmed down. I settled down to listen to a mp3 cd. Or I would have done had my monstrosity worked, for yes, just then my player broke (I have since worked out that the motor on the lenshead isn't working). At least I had my mobile phone, a limited, but serviceable mp3 device. Being prepared for electronic failure, however, I should not have been surprised to find that that wouldn't work either, because it didn't. No matter how I plugged in the earphones, the music wouldn't come through them. After half an hour of trying to clean the socket, I suddenly realised that for some reason I was plugging the headphones into the power socket, not the sound port. Unconsciously prepared for musical failure I had ensured it. I plugged the headphones in and kept quiet. I'll get an mp3 player soon.