I Just Knew It!!

The New Year started off much too smoothly, something was bound to go wrong. Not only did my calm euphoric state not last, it was shattered in a variety of ways and just to make it more emphatic it happened on successive days.

It started quietly enough with the car warning me that the brake pads were worn down. No problem, book the car in for remedial work. An unexpected expense, but ok it is wear and tear and, to be honest, something to cope with where mechanical devices are concerned. Fine. I trust the garage who do the repairs, I've used them for years, and duly took the car to them on Friday.

Later that day, while surfing the Net, I picked up one of the nastiest viruses imaginable. It told me my computer had a multitude of problems and that I should pay money to a particular website for the key to unlock their removal tool. Then to underline the problems (which I did not previously have) it disabled my security software, prevented access to any program which might help to remove the offending virus and, over a few hours, progressively prevented access to other programs too. All the while it bombarded the screen with pop-ups and periodically connected me to websites that I'd rather not see. So, I switched off and rang the chap who in the past has ministered to our various computers and who seems really to know his stuff. Saturday was the day for salvation. To cheer up The Family I booked cinema seats to see The King's Speech on Saturday afternoon.

On Saturday lunchtime I loaded the defective computer into the newly repaired car and delivered it to the repair guy en route for the cinema. The cinema had no booking (for which I'd paid) and, worse, had no showing at the relevant time! There are two cinemas in our town, about two miles apart, one of which changed its name from Vue to Odeon a while ago, while the other is still Vue. I had apparently booked Vue when I should have booked Odeon, but now it was too late to make the booking on time! We ended by paying again. It's a good job the film was good and in some way made me feel that I didn't mind quite so much paying twice as much to see it!!!

I collected the computer on Sunday. The Guy had been up half the night removing the Offence, but it had left the computer so slow that reformatting was the only option. Now I have my car, and pleasant memories of a good film to ease my task in re-loading the computer with my software. Thank God I keep back-ups of my data!!