The Remains of the Day.

(Actually, the day isn’t over yet, is it? But the story so far...)

Would you believe that workmen had the road up near the computer repair place? That seemed about par for the course at the moment (bloody retrograde Mercury!) So, a five-mile detour later...

I explained the boot up problem in detail to a young man. He said nothing as I was speaking, but his eyes kept opening wide as though his brain was repeating, at frequent intervals, ‘What?! It does that?! How am I going to break the news to you that you’re going to need a new computer?’ That wasn’t what he eventually said, though; he said I should leave it with them for a day or two and they would run diagnostic checks.

‘But I talk to Americans at two o’clock in the morning,’ I grumbled. ‘It would be nice to have the computer back tonight.’

I suppose it was a bit of a fib, but I couldn’t be bothered to explain all about alienation, the blogging habit etc, etc.

‘OK, I’ll run the checks now. Come back in three hours.’

I went off to do my shopping (the long way round, of course, because of the bloody roadworks) and returned three hours later.

‘We’ve discovered that you have some corrupt files on your hard drive. It’s going through a repair program now, but it’ll take some time yet.’

He explained to me how corrupt files can cause boot problems. I didn’t understand a word, of course, all I kept thinking was:

‘If living in a world with politicians and bankers isn’t bad enough, now even some of my files are corrupt.’

I asked him how long it would take. He didn’t know, but said they would ring me when the job was done. I thought it best to go home, just in case poor old Mr Computer needed an overnight stay. But no, at 4.15 I got the call.

‘How sure can you be that the corrupted files were the cause?’ I asked when I went back.

‘95%’

‘Right, so how much do I owe you?’

‘£58.’

*Reach for smelling salts, recover, take out credit card and pay.*

Mr C is now all connected again and working. So far. It will take a few days of trouble free booting before I’ll be convinced.