The phone com­pany Orange appear to be giv­ing out free head­phone adapters as part of some pro­mo­tion or other. So, nat­u­rally, on the band­wagon I jumped to see if I could grab some that would work with my phone. I filled in the form, clicked Sub­mit, and thought noth­ing of it for the next two weeks.

Then I get a failed deliv­ery note through the door. I’m expect­ing a few of these for var­i­ous people’s presents, most of which I’ve ordered off the inter­net. But it’s a let­ter, appar­ently, and Spe­cial Deliv­ery — so it needs sign­ing for. “Strange,” think I, “I’m not sure I ordered any­thing flat enough to be con­sid­ered a let­ter.” So down to the sort­ing office I go, and pick up… this. A something-bigger-than-A3-sized plas­tic ‘enve­lope’, that feels like it con­tains a piece of paper. Weird.

So I attempt to unpack said piece of paper. First thing of note, the envelope-thing is oily. Not vis­i­bly so, but I had to stop in the ASDA bath­rooms just to wash what­ever gunk it was off my hands. And, once finally inside, I dis­cover… two pieces of paper! Once of which is the deliv­ery note. The other, a full A4 sheet of 6-point text. “Terms and Conditions”.

What the heck?

Just in case, I rum­mage some more, and at the very bot­tom of the bag, I find a small black object, maybe a cen­time­tre long at most. And, once I’d found some light to see it prop­erly by — my god, it’s a head­phone adapter! I very nearly threw the bag away with­out find­ing the damn thing.

And, just to com­plete the aura of bizarrity sur­round­ing the whole thing, it of course is not even the right plug to fit my phone.

So, er, any­one want a 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack adapter? Be warned, I may send it to you in a full-length ship­ping container.