Your mileage will vary, no doubt, but this or something like it has happened to you, will happen again and may be happening today. Right now, I need a cable. I need an old iPad 30-pin cable, the type that Apple used for every iPad and every iPhone and every everything else for a decade or more and now doesn’t.

I actually don’t have a problem with Apple changing to the new slimline Lightning cables. Ten years with one type, shrug. But the cables are expensive enough that I hesitated over buying a spare for my travelling bag. In the end, a close call with a low battery convinced me to do it and the discovery that the cables cost less in the States convinced me to replace a damaged one while I was in San Francisco.

But today is the first time I’ve noticed I can’t find any of my old cables. I had oodles of these. I haven’t sold them or given them away, but they ain’t nowhere to be found. Unless they’ve gone to the same planet that old Biros do, they are right here with me and I can’t find them.

All I can find are lots of new Lightning cables.

Apparently these little suckers were introduced on September 12, 2012 and now, less than two years later, all traces of the old ones are gone.

I’m minded of this because I need the cable and I thought telling you might bring it back to mind where in the hell I’d left one. But also, I was in a chat the other night with some folk I’d not talked to in about the same length of time. And they asked me what I’d been up to and I told them nothing, really, couldn’t think of anything, and they pressed, and no, honestly but they pressed. Until I worked it out that when we’d spoken before, I’d done maybe one presentation to a group and this week I’ll be doing my fifty-something one.

I wanted to do this, I didn’t believe I could do it, and it’s done. And I can’t remember when I didn’t do it.

I need to find a cable, yes, but I think I also want to find more virtual cables and things I don’t believe I can do and go do those until they’re part of me too.