You just cannot hear the music without them

Jerusalem

You can buy these beautiful sleek fitted covers for MacBook Airs – they fit them like a glove - and I did this when I bought my MacBook Air a while ago.

It was just for travelling because I take a backpack and my MacBook Air is so light and delicate that I worry about it getting damaged.

But one day when we were in a hotel room somewhere and she was going to a meeting Cate said she needed a cover for her notebook computer for the day - so she would take mine. What?

It won’t fit I said (alarmed) – it’s designed specifically to fit mine like a glove.

No it will be OK she said – and I watched in horrified awe – as she proceed to cram her large rectangular computer into the glove-like case designed for my sylph-like slim and gorgeous Mac.

She found it tough going at first and the glove put up a fierce struggle but – like a python engorging a rabbit – after the first two thirds – the last third was a lot easier. I covered my ears to avoid the noise of the stretching and groaning fabric.

At then end of the day she gave the remains back to me.

It is one of those cases that holds its shape remarkably well. Sadly - the shape it holds is the last one it had - so it looks like it last contained two armadillos who fought to the death inside it.

I could now fit three MacBook Airs into it and leave room for a Big Mac and a Lime Slurpee.

So I gave it to her. And I have bought myself a brand new one from Amazon. I have attached a picture of what it looks like. The other one no longer looks like this.

She has that – together with the snazzy leather iPhone case I once had – and any number of iPhone headsets that she uses both for her iPhone and her BlackBerry.

She does things to iPhone and iPod headsets that the Apple engineers would not believe. I have looked closely at her ears – when she is asleep of course – so as to not arouse suspicion – and they look normal – but you would not think so if you see the wrecks of headsets that she presents to me with the plaintive cry – ‘Can I have another one of these please – this is broken!’

Broken hardly describes what she does to headsets. They are jumbles of parts held together by fragments of wire. It’s astonishing.

So I keep many spares handy – particularly when we are travelling – because she needs them for work - and my bitter experience has been that no matter how close you hold your ear to an iPod – and no matter how high you turn up the volume - you cannot hear the music unless you have headphones.