Tech-no-no-no-logy

I'm having one of those weeks where it can only be assumed that some deity hates me. I started off by leaving my rucksack on the train on Sunday evening. One of the numerous side effects of constantly packing my things up and traversing the country is that it's made me increasingly forgetful. I never used to leave anything behind; now I find myself regularly getting home to discover that I've left toothbrushes, hairbrushes, half-full pots of really quite pricey conditioner and the like in hotels, at friends' houses or on a train. Sunday was kind of a big one - I had so much stuff with me, that I didn't notice I'd left quite a crucial bit behind. (I'd put it on the shelf above the seats, where I never put anything, so hadn't thought to look up before I got off the train). It was the rucksack that I use for my gym kit, but which I'd re-purposed as a weekend bag, having put my main bag into left luggage, to avoid transporting it from Portobello to Hampstead, then down to Streatham, before going over to Walthamstow and then back to Kings Cross.

Thus the bag contained: trainers, gym kit, wash kit, make-up, PJs, sundry tops and underwear and an electric toothbrush. Quite a lot to have to replace. Thankfully, the train terminated at Edinburgh, so I was able to retrieve the bag the next day (the relief was slightly tempered by the fact that they now charge you a fiver to get your stuff back. Is there anything that remains unmonetised these days?)

So, strike one for positivity - the rest of the week's been a total mess so far. I got soaked on the way into work on Monday (having told everyone all weekend that the weather up here hasn't been as bad as I was expecting, given how shocking it was in December). Umbrellas are a bit pointless here, as the rain is usually combined with a hefty dose of wind, which really sorts the men from the boys, umbrella-wise; you have to rely on a hood instead. I then got to work and booted up the laptop, only to have it die ten minutes later. And by 'die', I don't mean 'freeze for a bit' and then respond to the usual IT Crowd 'turn it off and on again' approach, I mean 'the screen went black and it totally flatlined'. I bashed away at the on/off button to no avail. That's as far as my tech skills take me, really. I logged a call with the engineers and relocated to another part of the office to hijack someone else's computer.

Then our email went down - no communication possible with the outside world. For two days.

The engineer arrived yesterday morning to deal with my laptop. He spent five minutes bashing away at the on/off button. THAT'S WHAT I DID! SERIOUSLY, DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY BETTER SKILLS THAN THAT? I thought he'd be some kind of wizard, or Laptop Whisperer, who'd press a special button and resuscitate it and then I could, y'know, get on with my life. Or get my to do list from my desktop, at any rate. But no, he declared it dead and has taken it off to some kind of Holby City for Toshibas for a man with greater skills and knowledge to pull it apart and hopefully claw back the information from the hard drive.

I have been Goldilocks-ing my way round the office (today's computer: seemingly built in the late 1970s; I'm under instructions from its nervous owner not to turn it fully off, as it takes three days to start up. Yeah, tell me about it). I have no idea when a replacement might come from the engineers, or how long they'll keep mine in quarantine. Add this to panicky ad deadlines, endless meetings, having to forward everything to a colleague because I can't print anything out and having a nervous ten minutes yesterday morning when it looked like the Gas Board had already taken me to court, found me wanting, and were now going to break down my door in order to check my gas meter. I was most of the way through a panicky phone call to try to avert this (tears weren't beyond the realms of possibility) when I realised that actually, the mail had been mis-directed, and it wasn't me they were after at all, it was someone two doors down.

I need a weekend to recover from all this, and it's only Wednesday.