Jonny McCambridge: Charging the laptops, phones and tablets…it’s a lot more complicated than it seems

After some moments of muddled thought, I find clarity and come up with a surprising answer – charging electronic devices. Can it really be so? Has my life been reduced to a long procession of plugging in phones and tablets? And more to the point, could such a seemingly mundane subject matter be fertile ground for 1,000-odd words of my random musings?

Simply because I can think of nothing else to write about, I decide to make a list of all the devices I possess which need to be charged (apologies to any I have overlooked).

My mobile phone (personal); my mobile phone (work); my portable charger for charging my mobile phones when I’m away from home (which also, ironically, has to be charged); my laptop (work), my laptop (personal. Upon which I compose this column); my Ipad Mini (unused in several years but which I inexplicably still keep charged); my work video camera; my spare battery for the work video camera (you never know when it will come in handy); the large LiveU box which allows me to broadcast live video from major news events; my trusty Kindle; my running watch (I haven’t been jogging in several months, but the spirit is willing).

Warming to my task I then begin to list the items in the house which don’t belong to me but which I seem to have adopted the primary responsibility for charging.

My wife’s mobile phones (work and personal); my wife’s laptop, smartwatch, Kindle and video camera; my son’s smartphone (with GPS so we can track his location when he’s not with us); my son’s tablet (for homework and watching silly videos); my son’s video game console and virtual reality headset.

I read back over the list I have composed, startled by its size. My thought process has now shifted. I start to wonder how I ever manage to do anything productive at all when I’ve clearly got so many charging responsibilities. It seems close to miraculous that I’ve managed to sustain a family life and a career at all.

I consider that the task provides a window into my personality and psyche. I require my devices to be charged. By this I mean 100% charged. If I am forced to leave the house and one of my phones is at 94%, I am aware of it and it weighs heavily on my thoughts and sends me scurrying for my portable charger. If any device dips below 50% then I may become agitated.

My wife is different. I marvel and am a little bit envious of her cavalier attitude. The issue seems not to disturb her sleep. I charge her phones more often than she does. Usually when I seek them out, they are below 20%, well in the danger zone. What I find interesting is that this bothers me more than her, as if she is unalert to the imminent threat. It is precisely this sort of abandon which history teaches us has led to the collapse of great civilisations over generations.

My son seems to have inherited my mania for charging (although I am not sure I should claim parental pride over over this). He likes his tablet to be at 100%. If I am away and my wife forgets to charge it while he’s at school, he becomes grumpy.

It is not unknown for me to return home to be met at the door by my son exclaiming bitterly ‘Daddy, mummy forget to charge my iPad again!’ I will respond by tutting and shaking my head sadly in a knowing, but undoubtedly annoying fashion.

Meeting all of my charging responsibilities requires no small level of organisation. One of the challenges is that there are always more devices than charging leads. Our house is a graveyard of obsolete cables and plugs which are outdated or no longer work. Demand on those which are still in order can be fierce.

To answer this, I have developed a complex network of timings and locations to prevent the household from descending into chaos. Charging points are located in the kitchen, living room and bedroom. Occasionally my wife will decide to move a charging cable, fatally undermining my carefully constructed system. When this happens, experience has taught me that the lead will invariably become lost until I recover it from the bottom of her handbag.

Charging is a 24-hour operation and the requirement for sleep is no excuse for neglecting duties. Work devices will all be charged in the early evening, in preparation for the next day. The period immediately before bed will be used for fuelling reading devices. My son’s tablet is charged all night downstairs. Before I go to sleep a smartwatch is plugged in beside the bed. When I wake for my first overnight pee, the watch is replaced by my work phone. When I wake for my second overnight pee, my personal mobile is plugged in. I usually rise a couple of hours before my wife and this window in the early morning is used to charge her mobiles (upstairs and downstairs) before she gets up for work.

It is an admittedly protracted system, but it seems to work. I will leave it up to the reader to decide if they detect genius in it. My proposal to have it formalised by laminating a printed schedule of locations and times to display on the fridge has so far gone unsupported.

I will end on a different note. Over the last week I had that rare but enjoyable experience of meeting someone who reads this column. Even rarer, the fellow professed to enjoy it.

“What I really like,” he told me. “Is how you are able to write about any old rubbish.”

Well, indeed.