Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone! My iPod has been stolen and I must turn to W.H. Auden's dreadful elegy to express my woe. My black, 30 GB, fifth-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 in the UK could not have been more cruel in its timing.

Paradise Lost: Life After a Stolen iPod