Happy New Year to all our readers! Christmas came and went and I got a few books to read and set up the family with some playing cards, dominoes and a solitaire game ... for those long winter nights in front of the radiator panel: well, who has a fire these days? OK, so we have but that wouldn't be funny and post modernistic would it? An American friend has suggested that I turn my talents to writing smutty stories and selling them. How does this sound? As he looked tenderly towards the object of his desires, he licked his lips as his heart pounded and he dreamed of sliding his hand gingerly down her upper torso towards her little crock of gold! Drove down to Portsmouth the other day and having missed my final turn off from the motorway last time, I felt that it was my duty to take the turn off immediately BEFORE the correct one this time. Tried to retrieve the situation and missed the oportunity to get back on track but only because of my innate ineptitude, otherwise it would have been fine. Anyway, I drove along cursing and swearing at myself (I've got this down to a fine art now as I know exactly what to say, how to say it and in what order!) trying too look as if I knew how to get to Southsea. After 15 - 20 minutes of dodging and diving I came to the Marriott Hotel and, you've guessed it, the slip road back on to the motorway at the junction I just left ... in other words, dear reader, my navigational sense of beggar all took me in a complete circle! That was OK then and I arrived at my destination at exactly the same time as my visitees ... they had been delayed by about 40 minutes as he was taken by something in a shop. I said that God must have taken hold of my steering wheel and taken me on a tour of the nethers of outer Portsmouth while they meandered through a logistical retail experience. Then I spent around 8 hours successfully working on setting up and fettling a new laptop computer. Here's the ultimate irony, of course: the following day, yesterday, I got up to do my business and then had to spend almost SEVEN BLOODY HOURS trying to get my own laptop working properly. Unknowingly a virus had got into my system and it took me a while to realise that, cos I'm protected (sounds as if I'm protected by a condom with a tiny prick in it!!!); and then it was downhill all the way. I logged on late last night and it was playing up again so in my sleep I decided that I would do a RESTORE. "Oh no thou shall not" sayeth Bill Gates III "thy RESTORE function hast been RESET so that thou hast only one RESTORE point and that be the point at which thou hast fiddled a bit yesterday morning. Go back to thy old ways and repent. The way of the lord thy Gates is good!" So I took a more pragmatic approach. I did what I normally do and then left it to go and have breakfast. Sort yourself out I mind read at it: I couldn't do the usual verbal shout, rant and rave since others were still sleeping chez moi. It did sort itself out too ... so far anyway: otherwise you wouldn't be reading this! Happy new year anyway; and that's how mine has started. DW