GENIUSES ARE FIXING MY PHONE

"Nah mate," said the guy in the tropical phone shop. "You're gonna have to go to the Apple Store, see if they can fix it."

I went to the Apple Store. What a place. It's like an airport terminal, bustling with people trying to escape the dreariness of the outside world with a new iPad or Apple Watch or whatever else is in there.

Carefully navigating between the large plain IKEA-style tables and the crowd of people gathered around the iMacs, are the Apple Geniuses - grey t-shirts, earpieces and smooth confident smiles. They carry iPads in the same way waiters carry trays through posh restaurants.

I pulled out my embarrassingly cracked phone. It looked like I'd been playing football with it. In the softly glowing palace of brand new iPhones and glittering MacBooks, my phone would have been forgiven for feeling as self-conscious as I did. I pushed the button and watched the screen flicker into life.

A large, black stain had spread across the display; behind the tartan grid of faulty colours I could just about make out the screen, glimmering like a faint unreachable world I used to know. There would be no sliding to unlock today. I have to go back later to pick it up.

What actually is a genius? Wikipedia says it's someone who displays 'exceptionally superior intellectual ability, creativity or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge.'

In other words, someone who's so clever that they naturally invent things that no-one else has thought of. It's almost as though they can't help it; like Leonardo* they're wired up to be curious about how things work; like Einstein, they're somehow able to pursue a thought right the way through to its logical conclusion without letting their preconceived ideas of the solution get in the way. They're incredible thinkers, solution-finders and problem solvers who just can't help changing the world, wherever they go with their brilliant ideas and inventions.

So, how do they end up working in Apple Stores?



*Da Vinci, not Di Caprio.