Alexander never had an iPod

I've decided to treat myself to an iPod. For the philistines amongst you, this is not some new plant seed but a portable music player from Apple computers. Apple seem to preface all their products with an 'i' - iMac, iTunes, the Lancashire version eyeUp (I made that up) - so we get an iPod.

The iPod is a very smart looking, small (3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27) and light - I love it. The size is a bit of a problem. Bets are already being taken in the office as to what I'll do with it first - lose it or put it in my back pocket and sit on it. However, I digress.

The real problem with the iPod is not the unit itself. It's the flaming earphones. You may ask what this has to do with Alexander the great - bear with me on this one.

When Alexander was beginning his rampage across the Asian continent he came to a place in Greece called Gordium. Here there was a knotted rope so complex that no-one had been able to untie it. It was prophesied that the man who unravelled the knot would conquer Asia. Alexander did a bit of lateral thinking and cut the thing apart.

You do get the feeling that there is a bit of spin going along here. You can just imagine Alexander's press officer going around the local papyrus makers telling them what to put in their next daily/weekly/summer solstice scroll.

Nowadays, of course, he'd be hauled up in front of the local magistrates. 'Alexander of Macedonia, you are hereby charged with causing deliberate destruction of property and ruining our tourist trade; how do you plead?". "No guilty and if you don't let me go I'll make trouble for you". "Oh yes, you and whose army?" ....

Anyway, to get back to the earphones. The lead on these earphones is white, long and made of a particularly sticky type of plastic. They also have magical properties

Namely this.

However carefully you wrap them up the lead will coalesce into a frightful, tangled knot that would make the Gordian knot look like a child's shoelace.It's no good adopting Alexander's approach - I want to be able to use the damn things. So, every morning on the way to work I take the earphones out my pocket and carefully untangle them, and every evening I do the same on the way back home.

I've yet to listen to the iPod. I'm spending so much time untangling the darn leads that by the time I've got them into a useable state it's time to put them away again.

The only solution I can think of is just to leave the things permanently attached to my ears. The only problem is that you can't hear what's going on around - There I am, tapping my feet and humming the accompaniment to 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and world war 3 could have broken out for all I care.

One of these days on my normal commute I'm going to miss my stop and end up in a siding somewhere