"It's technology Jim, but not as we know it..."

I have the sense that I can see the future.

Now, before you come rushing round to ask for the winning lottery numbers, I should explain what the future looks like for me.

I can see that by about Wednesday of next week I shall be making phone calls on a Nokia 3310 from circa 2003.

You see, I've had one of those weeks when technology refuses to do what it is supposed to.

My technological progress this week is running from left to right

The starting point is the iPhone on the left. My current phone of choice which was working perfectly well right up to the point where I tried to see whether my Apple device was as adept as the latest offering from Samsung.

I can safely say that where Samsung has invented the phone with a folding screen, Apple has not. Having my phone in my pocket whilst carrying lots of boxes (another story I have yet to tell) I attempted to fold my iPhone in half and ended up with a phone which worked perfectly well on the left side and not at all on the right.

'That's no problem,' I said, 'I'll just dig out my old phone and use that.'

'Do you remember why you stopped using that phone?' Mrs Champion asked.

'No,' I replied, trying to turn my phone on and finding the battery flat.

'Wasn't it something to do with the battery?'

I kept pressing the power switch until the phone sprang momentarily into life, took a brief glimpse of the world I was trying to introduce it to, and died.

'Oh, yes, this might have been the phone which didn't keep its charge very well,' I said, plugging it into a mains charger.

Nothing happened.

'I thought it was the phone which you couldn't get to charge in the first place,' Mrs Champion observed.

How is it that Mrs Champion is so often right?

'I know,' I said, fiddling with the power cord, 'I'll get this one repaired at the same time as the other one - then I'll have a decent spare. I'll use my old iPhone 5 in the meantime.'

We then played a game The Champions play a lot.

It's called "Where did you put the [Insert Object Here]?"

You'll notice the use of the pronoun "you" in this sentence - most properly pronounced "YOU!"

So we hunted for the old iPhone 5 once I'd established with Mrs Champion that wherever it was she must have put it there. Sure enough, when we eventually found the phone it was in the desk drawer where I had put it.

Now onto my trusty old phone, I was confident that she wouldn't let me down.

And she didn't.

She charged perfectly, switched on, sprang smartly to attention and invited me to insert my sim card.

Then she asked "who are you?"

Of course, she didn't ask out loud - my iPhone 5 is not Alexa; that's a whole other series of blogs waiting in the wings.

What she actually wanted me to do was turn off "Find my Phone."

No one seemed to find in funny when I said we could have done with that feature an hour ago when we started looking for the phone. In fact, the one in the room that found it least funny was the phone itself.

'I have no idea who you are, and will refuse to work until you input the correct password,' she said.

Then the penny dropped.

We'd loaned her to a friend.

A simple call and we would have the problem solved.

14 different versions of the same password later and with the iPhone still refusing to play ball, I declared it the worst phone I'd ever owned.

Fortunately Apple allows you to change your password by sending a link to the email address you used to set up the app in the first place.

'Oh, yes,' our friend said, 'that's the email I used to have at my old company before they closed down.'

'Okay,' I said resignedly, 'we're going to Apple anyway, why don't we take this one as well?'

'What are you going to use as a phone?' Mrs Champion asked.

'My iPhone 3?' I suggested.

'That was the one which didn't hold its charge, wouldn't send emails and had a memory which filled when you tried to store a photograph,' Mrs Champion pointed out.

'Yes,' I said, 'it was my favourite iPhone ever - do you remember where YOU put it?'

We haven't found it yet - which means it is wherever Mrs Champion has hidden it -but just as soon as it turns up, I'm sure all my problems will be solved. If not we will be looking for the Nokia.

My old Nokia which will be in play just as soon as Mrs Champion remembers where she has put it...

Now all I have to do is organise three consecutive appointments at Apple because their system is telling me I need one appointment per device.

Still, I'm sure that'll be straightforward.

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