This afternoon there has been a controlled explosion of a can at a hospital in Paisley said to be related to attacks yesterday. It seems that the car was somehow related to the men responsible for the airport attack yesterday. The UK is on its highest level of alert. An attack is said to “imminent” which will make next week rather unerving for residents of the UK.

Its gets better. Two of the men arrested were NHS doctors.

My iPhone: I have played with my iPhone, and showed it off, for 24 hours. I share with you a few more details.

While downloading my contacts as part of the original sync process last evening, my land phone made intermittent noises, anguished electronic sounds. The first several times this happened, I pulled the iPhone out of its dock to check on what it was doing. No contacts. Hmm. What is happening? So, after ten mintues of this, I checked the phone and yes, contacts were all there, all 200+. It appears that while the phone was downloading the contacts, the signals were interfering with the land phone stuck between the iPhone and the computer like a sandwhich filling. No harm done. Fortunately, the dog was not in the room. Those noises would have chased her out for certain.

There were additional surprises in the beautiful iPhone box I did not mention in my first piece; a rectangle of black faux suede the size of the iPhone, surely a chamois to clean the phone. And it works well. I admit that I succeeded in getting the glass pretty oily after handling it all day, so a few drops of soapy water were brought to the rescue, followed by a good chamois rub. The last thing I found in the box was a white paper rectangle with two classic white Apple logo decals attached. That gave me a good laugh. We have generations of those things in this house. It is as though this little sheet of paper with its two decals is the continuing element though successive iterations of Apple inspiration.

When I bought the iPhone last evening, I also purchased a clear plastic carrying case. I fitted my phone into it this afternoon, in a lull between periods of real iPhone use. The front of the phone was (even more) beautiful, enhanced by the clear plastic surround, but I could not get the bulky clip assembly off the back, a clip not being in my pattern of use. Now, after a trip back to the AT&T store, I have a simple leather encased shell for the iPhone. Very nice piece of kit. There is a spot for attaching the usual clip, but not for me. This is the Signature Leather Case by Case Mate. I am just not going to tell you how much I paid for it, especially since the iPhone really does not need a case if you don’t use a clip.

On my return visit to my helpful AT&T store, I discovered the store empty of customers. Since they ran out of product perhaps a third down the queue last evening, it appears the only customers were traditional customers, and successful customers from last evening who needed some accessory. I learned there had been numerous visits from customers hoping to find an iPhone today. I hope for the sake of these people and our store, that an additional shipment will arrive early on Monday. On a business note, I learned that a significant number of the successful customers were new customers for AT&T. Of the people first in the queue, along the front of the store, the first 25 or so of the total queue, the average age appeared to be closer to 40 plus. And of those people, I was the only new AT&T customer. Of the lot ‘round the side of the store, they were younger and more non AT&T customers. I would guess that my store had a maximum of 50 iPhone last evening. All the people I talked to were buying 8 gig phones. Some of the last few happy customers may have had to compromise with the 4 gig phone.

So, on to the details, I finally made a phone call with this marvel at about hour 22 of ownership. Remember, I bought this thing more for its internet and WiFi capability than phone. Of course, the phone works just fine. By now, I have a list of favorites from my contact list so I have only a little more than one screen’s view before finding the number I want to ring. I confess that last night and this morning, during my first navigating through the phone features, I was more than pleased not to have phone service from my home. I fear I would have made more than a few unintended calls by touching in the middle of the contact line rather than the far right to look at contact details. But then, in January, I recall that Steve Jobs called someone unintentionally as he was demonstrating the phone, so I was not alone in that.

For contacts, I am still doing additions and a bit of cleanup. My contact list has migrated over the years from Palm device to Palm device and finally two years ago into the Mac application for downloading onto my iPod nano. When the contacts were synced into the iPhone, any inaccuracies in phone number classification showed up. I found many of the older telephone numbers were categorized as “other” rather than “home” or “work.” This problem shows up particularly when you have identified a contact as a favorite, then there is no number showing up in the starred contacts category for the individual. This is all easy enough to remedy by changing other to work or home and deleting the empty categories, using the edit and then delete option that pops up next to every line.

Not ever having used YouTube, I pressed that button this afternoon and picked one of the most viewed. So suddenly, there was that little dog skateboarding away, back and forth. My husband said, what is that, did that come with the phone? He sees this whole queuing and hours of fascination with my new phone as a final sign that I am truly nuts, I did assure him this video did not come with the phone.

On to the pure pleasure: I can sit out on the porch overlooking the sea or at the breakfast table quietly reading my favorite web pages, my e-mails, listening to Growing Old Disgracefully or to Stile Antico. What a life! The speaker is good enough so I can listen without headphones. Not a strategy for battery efficiency, I am sure. I have also used the phone at the little local cafe, Black Bird Cafe. Two people came to me and said “Is that?...oh yes it is…can I see it?” Two converts right there. Then, this evening, a friend came over as soon as she heard I had the phone. Instant conversion. She would be new to Apple as well, so a double there. As for me, the iPhone is already a habit.

It all works so beautifully, I am not sure I could come up with a useful improvement. The one convenience I would add would be to make e-mail adaptable to landscape view just as Safari, photos and videos are now. Surely only a software upgrade from here. Really, though, the iPhone proves you can have it all!

Mater

Sir – In light of threats of violence from angry wine-makers (report, June 22), Nicolas Sarkozy’s attitude is doing nothing to help protect vineyards and jobs in the south of France.

The collapse of wine prices in France is a direct result of British supermarkets’ policies to sell cut-price wine. They are so bent on what they call hitting magical price points that the quality of the product suffers. With a 3 bottle of wine, once you remove 1.34 for duty, 45p for VAT, 36p for bottling, packaging, shipping and handling and remove an average profit of 20 per cent for the retailer, the winemaker is left with just 34p to make the wine. At 34p, the wine-maker can’t make a quality natural product.

How can you compare a wine made from grapes grown with chemical pesticides, mechanically harvested and then shipped to Europe in chemically stabilised 20,000-litre containers for bottling in Italy and Scotland, with a hand-harvested naturally fermented wine that is bottled at source?

The illusion that you can purchase “real wine” at 3 a bottle is the main cause of the troubles in French vineyards.

Steve Bennett, Redditch, Worcestershire

This bit of idiocy comes from Saturday’s letter page in the DT. I wonder if the person who is writing it realises how daft his letter reads.

Surely a way to help wine produceres is to cut the duty. Its not the fault of the supermarkets for living up to customers expectations. Its the fault of government for its over-taxation of wine.