Pesky Machines

Switched on my laptop this morning, got my emails, played my regular word game and then my guy says, "I've got this new bit of software. I'm going to clear all the temporary files and junk off your machine." Fine. Degunked, I went back to my game. It wouldn't load. Tried my g-mail account. That wouldn't work either. "Looks like your machine has died. You'll have to buy a new one," says the knowledgeable one.

"But it worked all right till you cleaned it up," I bleated. So he reset all the settings back a couple of days and it still wouldn't work.

Then my memory sticks, which worked fine in the laptop, died in my big machine. I could feel tension grip my throat. My heart began pounding and my hands went cold and shaky. I want to kill. Machines and the man. £500 poorer (soon to be), thirty notches on my blood pressure and a smug smile emanating from the study downstairs. It's my fault, according to him. I put out a vibe that is death to machines. (Partly true, but I was in a fine mood before all this started.)

How to cure computer-generated blood pressure problems? Take some very deep breaths, throw laptop out of window and go for a long walk. Even in the rain. And camomile tea, drunk slowly, not too hot, sweetened with a blob of honey. I can feel the tides of tension subsiding already.

P.S. Later that day, the man reloaded the latest version of Firefox. The machine now works again, but with one strange glitch. If I type an email too quickly, the whole thing vanishes off the screen. Then an icon comes up telling me that my last task finished unexpectedly and asking if I would like to continue where I left off. Maybe someone up there is telling me to think before committing myself to paper. (I have in the past been notorious for my 'scorchers' - letters dashed off in the heat of the moment and delivered to the person I am furious with, rather than left till next morning and re-read once I've cooled down. More camomile tea!