Lost Phones

We have been staying in Beaumaris for a long weekend and Hay managed to lose the same phone twice in two days, in two completely different ways, and neither involved drunkenness, cliffs, or a malicious seagull. This is important, because it rules out the usual defences.

The first disappearance was domestic. The Airbnb bathroom. A room specifically designed to absorb sound, block signal, and encourage you to put things down “just for a moment”. The phone was placed somewhere safe, logical, and utterly invisible. It would not ring because it could not hear us. It would not locate because it could not speak to the outside world. It was not lost. It was sulking.

We did all the right things. We retraced steps. We rang it. We stared accusingly at Google Maps Timeline as if it were a sentient being withholding information out of spite. Nothing. The phone had gone dark, like a submarine slipping beneath the thermocline.

Eventually it was found, exactly where it had been left, mocking us with its innocence. Case closed. Lesson learned. Or so we thought.

The following day, emboldened by experience and a long walk to Penmon Point, the same phone decided it was time for a sequel. This time it chose public transport, the gold standard of object abandonment. The bus from Llangoed to Beaumaris, where phones go to tour Anglesey without their owners.

 
Now the technology woke up. Suddenly the dot was alive. Not only alive, but moving with purpose. Heading places. Making progress. The phone, which the day before had refused to acknowledge civilisation, was now confidently heading for Bangor.

At this point we entered the heroic phase. Real time tracking. Tactical driving. Interception. The sort of thing normally reserved for spy films or people chasing stolen tractors. And it worked. We caught the bus. We recovered the phone. Nobody applauded, but they should have.

The moral is not that Google is clever, although it is, when it feels like it. Nor is it that Find My Device works and Timeline does not, which is also true but dull.

The real lesson is that phones are not lost at random. They vanish in bathrooms, where physics intervenes, and on buses, where ownership becomes theoretical. Everything else is user error dressed up as fate.

Two losses. One phone. Zero lessons learned, except possibly not to trust bathrooms, buses, or the quiet confidence of someone saying “I definitely put it somewhere safe”.