I sunk my iPod

I DON’T think the screen is sup­posed to look like that. It cer­tainly didn’t look so pixel­lated last week­end, but then again last week­end it hadn’t been dropped in a sink full of plates and dirty, soapy water and then spent a week in a bag of oat­meal. In case you need instruc­tions on how to drop your iPod Touch in a full sink, here’s what I found to be the best way:

1. Make sure volume is right up, you’re wear­ing over-the-ear head­phones and a song you really, really like is play­ing.

2. Go into the kit­chen to get a cof­fee.

3. Put iPod on counter about six to twelve inches from sink.

4. Make sure sink is full. The scum­mier the water, the bet­ter.

5. Pour cof­fee.

6. Exit kit­chen for­get­ting that the music you’re listen­ing to is com­ing through head­phones that are attached to a small expens­ive elec­tronic device.

7. Won­der why there’s a sharp tug at your left ear.

8. Fol­low cable back to sink.

9. Remove iPod, won­der how the hell you’re going to explain this to Ev.

10. Whatever you do, act like noth­ing happened and keep listen­ing to it. If the iPod stops work­ing a couple of minutes later then you got it right.

11. Once Ev does find out what you’ve done, giggle and laugh and say it’s not a prob­lem. This will in no way make the situ­ation worse when she real­ises you’ve des­troyed a $250 iPod.

After frantic­ally Googling “dropped iPod Touch in water” I dis­covered that you’re sup­posed to put it in a bag of rice for a week as that’ll absorb all the mois­ture. We don’t have any rice so Ev impro­vised and stuck it in a bag of oat­meal, where it spent a happy week slowly dry­ing out while prob­ably wish­ing it didn’t have a com­plete tit for an owner.

This morn­ing I took it out of the bag, wiped the bits of oat­meal off it, plugged it into the char­ging dock and hey presto! it charged. Once the bat­tery was full I con­nec­ted it to the PC and it was recog­nised. I restored it. But now there’s a sod­ding pad­lock icon on the top bar where the time should be and although it’s telling me to “slide bar to start” noth­ing I do will work. The screen won’t respond to any­thing I do, from swip­ing to press­ing to yelling. Have I just locked the screen, or have I buggered it up com­pletely? More to the point, will my scro­tum be removed with a blunt spoon as I sleep if I can’t get it work­ing? HELP ME PLEASE!