Repaired - and broken again.

WE GET A CALL this morning from the local computer shop: our laptop has been repaired - and, we're told, it won't cost the earth.

One of us - I'm too much the gentleman to say who - dropped the computer and damaged the DVD drawer; anyhow, it's been straightened. Great stuff, I can't tell you how much I've miss the laptop while it's been in dock.

We get it home this evening and after dinner we try to fire it up.

Nothing.

I can't believe it! Somehow, between leaving the shop and getting it home it seems to have got damaged again.

And this time, I fear it may be really serious; the power light comes on, but the computer remains dead.

Dead... Caput... Defunct... Unproductive...

I don't know why it is, but somehow an unresponsive computer is one of the most uselessly frustrating objects in all creation.

A car that won't start is only second on the list - on my list anyway.

I also seem to have been going through a phase in which I've suffered a number of domestic and personal setbacks of one sort or another.

The laptop is just the cherry on the cake.

Anyhow, tomorrow, it's back to the computer shop for further repair.

Drat it!