The Wave in the Sky
22/3/2026
I went into the Samsung Palace the other day. You know, the big Wave in the Sky near Granary Square, King’s Cross.
I had – would you believe it – a Samsung phone, which I had (by some good fortune at the time) LOST, or – more likely – had STOLEN – from a property in Hackney…
And then it reappeared! In an A4 see-through envelope, with other things in it.
I couldn’t get into it. The pattern between the dots was wrong.
Now I had already taken it to other fixers of phones. People kept redirecting me. From Currys to I-smash… I-smash couldn’t help me. The only people who could help me (said I-smash) were the Samsung people.
So I went to Granary Square.
Bearing in mind I have some sort of condition in my knees which is having repercussions on my breathing, I nevertheless strode forth with my hopes high on a beautiful Spring afternoon in London.
The birds were tweeting. The arts students from St. Martin’s were rolling about on skates or practising their dance moves in cool avenues. It was a long painful walk across a bridge and the square after covering most of Tottenham Court Road. But I got there.
One funky lift wouldn’t open for me. But the other one, mysteriously, could.
“Bing” said the lift. And I was lifted.
I had been to this place before.
Truth to tell, I have never had any joy there. Trying to fix this phone.
I gave them the information they wanted. I couldn’t get into it. I thought it had been messed with. No, I didn’t have proof of purchase. Or the something special from Google they wanted. I just had the phone.
Had I heard of GDPR (something to do with Data Protection)?
“So, you are trying to protect my data by not fixing my phone?”
“What if it’s not your phone?”
“It is my phone.”
“But what if it’s not?”
Dr. Griffith breathes quietly, counting to ten.
and then, politely:
“Do you have an idea of how rude that sounds?”
“We don’t mean to sound rude. It’s just the law.”
There comes a point in these conversations where, at my age, I suddenly perceive myself as a dog that has to be trained to be good in order to deserve treats. Like having my phone fixed. The trouble is I am not like my grandma. I ignore the signs. Deliberately. On behalf of all young people – as well as the old – everywhere, I have no intention of growing old gracefully. And like a Staffy on heat, I go in for the kill.
“Are you trying to tell me that in this vast emporium to Samsung products, this palace to all that is quick and convenient and helpful, that you can’t fix my phone?”
“Do you have a Gmail address?”
“Yes,” I replied, “several.”
An engineer had joined us by this time. There were hardly any real people there, by which I mean clients. He looked skywards, having done the workshop on keeping calm and telling it just as it is, smiling philosophically at several steel girders – mixed with tasteful wooden beams. Beaming at the beams.
“Ah,” he said. “We can’t help you. Sorry.”
“Well,” I started, “do you think you could get it back to its factory settings…?”
“Without proof of purchase, I’m afraid -“
“Whoever stole it… And put it back… They didn’t have proof of purchase, did they? Unless they stole that as well! And THEY got into it… Couldn’t I sell it to the people who know how to hack into the thing -“
“Without proof of purchase…”
“The trouble is,” I ventured, sotto vice, “there is far too much red tape in this country…”
I picked on a very nice young lady in a hijab wearing an AI advertising tee-shirt who was very attentive to what I was saying. “Do you have younger brothers and sisters?”
She nodded, listening.
“What do you suppose they will do for a living? Work here with you? There are more staff here than clients. AI is going to take all your jobs, and all their opportunities away. Just the same as the supermarket machines are taking jobs from budding grocery retailers.”
She was listening.
“What else is going to happen? When something that cost me so much money is inaccessible because of silliness like this! Me hobbling about London trying to get something fixed that could be sorted-by-criminals-so-quickly-and-quietly like stealth bombers acting in completely-innocent-parts-of-the-world!”
(Rhetoric was rising in my throat, nothing would stop it…)
Something, I knew it, was wrong somewhere.
Something was really wrong.
By the time the cool and funky lift decided to refuse to come up and open for me. By the time I’d decided I HAD to GET OUT of the emporium – I was shouting. I was shouting about how AI and the internet was going to take away everyone’s jobs. I was shouting that what the emporium represented was everything that was non-sensically stupid and wicked and just plain wrong about this country. I mean, I PAID for this thing. A lot of money. I could look at the brushed chrome around the lift and decide that the cost of my phone might have paid for the buttons working the automatic doors. Without the cost of my phone, it was likely that those lift buttons – made to look like sunflowers or something – those buttons – would not exist.
Everything would have got better. All would have been so much better if – when I got down the stairs – the world wasn’t still full of cool young art students on their roller skates suiting the suavity of my sunglasses in a way I simply could not manage under the circumstances. Things would have been so much better if I hadn’t turned the air blue with my curses near respectable, hardworking parents and their cute little children brought closer to them while listening to my complaints. Perhaps if I hadn’t made rude gestures to the CCTV machines… Which were everywhere, of course. Perhaps things would have been better. Everyone laughing at me. Even the frisbee players whose games I’d interrupted with my striding about.
But – do you know what made things better? You know what?
Two things. Or maybe three.
The adrenaline coursing round my veins made me forget the pain in my legs. That was good. Then the notification sound on my phone telling me that some poor excuse for a human being – the kind that could probably fix my phone, actually – had managed to hack into Companies House’s system. Companies House, I ask you! The place looking after my details like so many other hacked-into places. Bloody Companies House. Associated with His Majesty’s Revenue – that is TAX with all it’s own failures – had FAILED – FAILED – to look after my details.
The other thing that made things better, was a gentleman outside Kings Cross tube station, who was telling us we’d lost our souls and would end up in Hell. A bit heavy on the alcohol as an excuse, didn’t he know? It isn’t just the whisky that gets you there.
We are already there. In an Emporium of our own making. A lack of a receipt.
A Wave in the Sky.