Oh Siri, Siri, Siri....

*sigh*

I think this is going to be an interesting relationship.  I'm sure there have been screeds and screeds of highly witty commentary written about Apple's digital friend but, what can i say - i'm tardy to the party, so i'm on late-breaking voyage of discovery of the singular joys of Siri.   Yes - FINALLY, i ditched the long-suffering Blackberry and finally traded in my work phone for an iPhone.  Even though I still loved the fruity gadget for the sheer joy and easiness of writing work emails for clients at the weekend and evenings, I'd finally had enough of its utter uselessness for anything else.  I wanted to be one of the cool kids (OK, OK, one of the 129 million Americans who own a smartphone) and be able to have those water-cooler conversations with myself at work about the latest must-have app I'd just downloaded or to be able to annoyingly Instagram everything in sight and imagine myself a hipster.

So, here I was, a Thursday night a couple of weeks ago, flying back to SF from meetings in NYC with a newly-minted iPhone 5 in my pocket and the United app already gleefully telling me I was number 1 on the upgrade list to miss the cut.  Fabulous.

Anyway, the flight back was fine, pretty smooth and with only a limited skirmish of Armrest Wars, so I landed around 10.30pm with no drama and just eager to get home to see the boys.  I autopiloted out of the terminal, did the usual routine of finding where i'd left my car in the car park by systematically unlocking and then re-locking it to locate it by its flashing lights and alarm beep, only to then find a rather unwelcome welcome home gift.

A flat.

Well, buggery bollocks.  I've only ever had one flat tire before, so I guess in 20-odd years (20 or so duration, not 20 weird... you know what i mean) of driving, thats not too terrible, but it was mildly irritating, seeing as I'd just flown all the way across the country and just wanted to get home for a nice cup of tea and to measure the depth of fluff the boys had been busily laying down on the couch in my absence.  Fortunately, I'd had the presence of mind somewhere in the dim distant past to buy auto insurance that actually included insurance for situations just like this!  Who knew??  And, what's more, I even had the insurance details on a little card in my wallet!  Well done me!  How terribly grown-up of me!  So, with my brand new iPhone 5, i called the White Knight on my insurance card (not to be confused by White Castle - thats a different kind of emergency) and was assured that someone would be with me within 30 mins who could help me out.  And - even more impressive - apparently I had a spare emergency tire in my trunk!!  And its been there the whole time!!  Huzzah!!  All I had to do was simply sit in my car, play with the Sounds settings on my new iPhone and wait for help to arrive.

After about 15 mins of trying to decide between Time Passing or Crickets as ring tones (both felt...I don't know...somewhat judgmental), I decided I should probably spend my time doing something slightly more constructive instead and find out where the closest tire repair shop in town was.  I had friends coming in to stay over the weekend, so needed the car to run around and do fun IKEA-errands with - none of which would be much fun on a 50mph upper-limit emergency tire.  So, I fired up Siri for the very first time and gave her the simple command in my clearest, least British-sounding accent:

Me: "WHERE IS THE NEAREST TIRE REPAIR STORE?".

Here was her erudite, weirdly-metallic sounding response:

Siri: "I am sorry"

Siri: "There is no one in your contacts matching "TY-RA PES-TO"

Good grief.
Is it too late to ask for my Blackberry back?