Two laptops down and a gift card for somewhere that wasn’t Apple, I headed to the latter’s Covent Garden store.

Lyle helped me.  ‘This is the one you need’, he said pointing to the MacBook Air.  ‘Has it got enough storage for me?’ I asked.  He seemed to think it had and three hours later I had one.

All mine. I got it home and opened the inconspicuous brown cardboard casing it came in.  How clever;  it was like playing pass the parcel and getting to the prize, for it opened up onto a slick white box with a cellophane seal around it and a photo of my new toy on the front.  I opened the plastic, relishing every moment, and lifted the lid.

Inside, it was all efficiency.  The laptop itself lay on the top; wrapped in a film of something so, well…filmy, it was hard to decipher if it was actually there.  Underneath lay just a couple of pockets with gorgeous white plugs and a little booklet saying:  ‘Hello’.

Hello indeed.  I took the slinky film off this piece of gorgeousness and opened it up.  Immediately the screen was bright and the keyboard ‘spoke’ to me: ‘I’m backlit!’ it said with a sweet smile. Well, not quite, but if a keyboard could speak…

It was hard to remove the grin from my face: It was like I’d just seen Santa, in the flesh, delivering the Cindy doll I’d always wanted when I was seven.

The feeling I had was similar to when I bought a Barbour back in the early nineties.  At the time a work colleague remarked: ‘Everyone who owns a Barbour always looks so smug – so pleased with themselves’. Well, now I’m part of the Apple gang, it seems to be having the same effect.

‘The only reason I’ll return this is if I find the keyboard too narrow’ I said to the sales assistant.  He looked at me sceptically.

I’m already looking forward to all those one-to-ones where they show you everything this slim piece of fruit can do.  Touch Apple, it’ll all go according to plan.