It was like a scene out of a bad techno-movie. Two days before the contractual deadline for Spike Book 4, I opened up the Word file for some last minute tinkering and saw that the letter ‘h’ was not typing properly. Odd, I thought, as the cursor started to blink in a strange, blurry way. Then a letter of one of the words of Chapter One deleted before my eyes. Even odder… As I typed the letter back, the cursor, as if irked, deleted a whole word. Was Backspace jammed? Very uneasy now, I touched the key; suddenly, as though realising its time was limited, and clearly having developed a taste for destruction, the cursor went crazy, deleting line after line of the document. The first chapter started to disappear; I sat back in a daze, wondering if this was a sick joke, if someone had taken control of my computer remotely. Then I snapped back to attention, desperately trying to close the file before everything disappeared. It took a lot of clicks, but eventually it shut down. I tried to reopen the file. No chance — the ‘My Documents’ box was flicking madly from one icon to the next. I hit Restart; as the computer closed, it started to scream. A low, mournful sound I have never heard a machine make. Not a beeping, but a wail. The Toshiba was toast. The book was lost.
Once I had calmed down, I found the last place I had sent the file — a Hotmail address — and managed to open it on my wife’s laptop. Strange keyboard, different computer… I felt at sea. But somehow the book made it in on time. And today I am trying to locate an IT guy willing to come and try and fix the original virus-ridden computer.
Perhaps it’s time to face up to the need for a new laptop. For financial and nostalgic reasons I hope not…
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