OneAndOneIs2

Last week was half term. It wasn't a good time for keeping things in my possession. Firstly, there was my USB hard drive. This is a vitally important piece of hardware - Of its 40GB capacity, barely one gig remains free. That space is made up of portable apps like Firefox; education resources from various places, my entire MP3/Ogg collection, and quite a few ripped movies & things.

When I arrived in school on the Friday, I was fairly sure it was in my bag. But in the afternoon, it was nowhere to be found. Not in my bag, not on the table, nowhere.

Damn, must have left it at home I thought optimistically. Then I left for the day, and indeed for the week, and looked around at home. No sign of a hard drive.

Argh!

Not only is it bad from the point of view of hard-to-replace files living on it, it's also pretty appalling from a privacy point of view - all my passwords and my whole browsing history lives on that hard disk. That's why I'm usually really careful with it.

Must have left it in the science department after all. Damn, that's a week without far too many resources. *sigh*

So then I go up to London to visit the Science Museum. And the Underground was against me from the start: Every time I got to a platform, the train was pulling out and I had to wait for the next one. EVERY TIME!

Finally, one train was still there as I arrived, but it was beeping, signifying that the doors were about to close. Hence I broke into a run and leaped through the train doors just before they could close.

As I leaped, I saw something drop down and, in obedience to the laws of momentum, it described a beautiful curved trajectory as it continued forwards and accelerated downwards.

To put it another way, my keyring with all my keys detached itself from my belt loop and fell beneath the train doors. Which promptly shut. And the train left the station.

NNNnnngg...

So that was the keys to my flat and the key to the science rooms at school gone. I backtracked to the station and looked, but there was no sign of my keys on the ground by the rails - either somebody had already picked them up, or they were in fact hanging under the train. Either way they were gone forever.

Luckily, my flatmate was home when I got there so I was able to get in, and she got a copy of hers so it only cost me a fiver on that score.

Then I came back to school today, and my USB drive is nowhere to be seen. Nowhere.

It isn't at home, this I know. It isn't in my bags, I emptied them repeatedly in a futile search. It MUST be here. But isn't. Surely it couldn't have been stolen..?

Sherlock Holmes: Eliminate the impossible...

It definitely wasn't at home. I swear I remember bringing it into school in my bags, but it's nowhere to be seen in the school. Ergo it must be in my bags. QED.

Except I searched the bags several times already.

One more search?

Why not...

And naturally, after a whole week feeling the loss of my hard drive like a phantom limb, I finally notice there's a pocket in the top of my laptop bag. And inside this previously-unnoticed compartment?

My USB hard drive. Where it's been all week, readily available.

Bloody typical.