I don’t use an IPOD – Kim snaffled it in our household (ha! – read on), but they seem to be doing for new generations of commuters what the old magazines and books did – provide some entertainment, and maximise your chance of being ignored. I can distinctly remember the teenage pain of being bookless and stuck travelling on a Kingsbury tram to the city shyly dodging stares of passengers and concentrating very heavily on shopfronts rolling by whilst trying to catch reflective images of hot females sitting nearby. Torture. So, a book accompanies me simply everywhere on transport and even in doctor’s waiting rooms now, and the Age A2 section or free MX mag gets a workout in case the novel is too tiring. But the IPOD folks seem to have the numbers nowdays amongst the younger, nervy types. Is it my imagination that girls/women seem to have taken to them in droves? Perhaps they provide stronger symbols of disinterest to potential male intruders than traditional scowls. Whilst in a crowded bookshop yesterday, I nearly collided with a pretty-young-thing and after apologising and sorrying, I realised that she had pretty much blanked me – her headphones providing an excuse to simply not relate or interact. So, it’s the ultimate anti-social no-manners no-care device. I wonder if she bothered to take them out of her ears at the counter? There were a couple of other female equivalents in the same shop. Egad! Am I witnessing a manifestation of internet-generation social problems because people just don’t know how to relate nowdays? Or want to. I’m still torn between thinking that they’re the refuge of the underconfident or a blanket of warmth for the music lover killing some time. Maybe both.