To the thief who stole my iPod - you have broken my heart

But who cares? My black, 30 gigabyte, 5th-generation videopod - my north, my south, my east, my west - went missing last Wednesday and I am bereft.

I have been through all the phases: denial, anger, depression. Last week's launch of the new iPhone could not have been more cruel in its timing. All those gleeful consumers emerging from the Apple store holding their expensive trophies aloft - if they only knew what a fragile, ephemeral thing they have in their hands!

What is it about the pretty little box that so stole the heart of this Luddite? I have a pathological fear of telephones; I once had a fist fight with a DVD player. But despite resisting the iPod for a long time, I grew deeply attached when I did succumb.

Aside from the expense - that's £180 down the crapper and no, it wasn't bloody insured - it's the amount of love I poured in that makes losing it so miserable. I had painstakingly filled those 30 gigabytes of memory. Will the light-fingered scoundrel who stole it appreciate the quirks of my playlist? Will they work through all 50 episodes of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour? Will they admire the B-sides of The National, the obscure snippets of French electro? Or will they get home, wipe the memory and fill it up with 50 Cent?

We had our arguments. It went into sulks and crashed. But I learned how to massage it back to life with a judicious combination of buttons. And then I would always be rewarded - it would drop into a random playlist a song so ingeniously apt I wondered if it didn't know me better than I knew myself.

How to move on? I have taken to using a massive old Dictaphone for my ambulant musical needs. This has its charms - it has reacquainted me with a drawerful of old compilation tapes - but the sound is awful and it looks like a Sputnik.

I cannot help noticing one thing though. Since she has gone, I have taken to playing my guitar again, something I haven't done with any great zeal since about two years ago - exactly the time the iPod stepped into my life in the first place. I am now channelling the thought that once went into compiling playlists into composing melodies.

It's a small consolation - but when those iPhone owners find themselves mugged at the bus stop, they might choose to replace it with, say, a ukulele. At least, in their pain, they would have something to write a song about.