Fury

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I have computer rage, general technology rage, whatever hideous stomach bug attacked my poor dog rage, people talking talking talking and not ever bloody listening rage, and low pressure headache rage.

The computer thing was entirely my fault. I hurled a full glass of water all over it. Luckily it was old and due for an upgrade and I had been thinking for a while that it was time for more hard drive. I need space. It’s just that I could not quite face the soul-destroying thing that is a visit to PC World in Aberdeen. I used to drink in Harry’s Bar in Venice, and I knew every single bartender at The Carlyle, and I once went all the way from the top to the bottom of India by train. My life used to have mystery and romance. Now it is the neon-lit hell of bloody PC bloody World.

I admit this is a First World Problem. It’s just an ugly room with clueless people in it. It’s just a really stupid hiring policy and a management diktat to get the hapless customers to fill in as many bogus forms as possible and take out as many useless warranties as human wit can devise. But still, I’ve been much too rational lately, so even the thought of PC World made me wig out.

But I was stuck with a half-dead computer. I never knew how much I relied on the right click button. I’ll just drive up to Tesco in the next town along, I thought. It was a lovely drive, up the river, the trees still in their new green. It’s just a little Scottish town, and a new, quite small Tesco, and I was not hopeful. But there, in a box, was a perfect Dell, just the thing I wanted, at about a hundred and fifty quid less than the ones I looked at in panic last night on the interwebs.

‘Are you sure that is the right price?’ I asked a nice man.

He nodded. ‘It does seem very good,’ he said. ‘We can’t keep them on the shelves.’

I called the Man in the Hat. ‘I think it must have fallen off the back of a lorry,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Clearly Tesco is trafficking in stolen goods.’

(Just in case any lawyers are reading: that was irony.)

So it was one problem half solved, but I had forgotten about the hell that is setting everything bloody up. If one more thing asks me for my mother’s maiden name or my date of birth or my postcode I shall hurl a heavy object across the room. Don’t even talk to me about transferring files. My email chose this moment to get stuffed, and refuses to let me anywhere near it, and I cannot face the hour long call to the centre in Bangalore. I had forgotten there is no way to access my iTunes library, because of Steve Jobs’ evil plan to take over the world, and every time I tried to do something a little box popped up to say, effectively, you must be joking.

Then The Pigeon started throwing up everywhere. At first I thought she had just been foraging and eaten something that did not agree with her, but then she went into a sharp decline. When she refused a tiny morsel of beef and would not even chase her ball, I realised something was very wrong. The Older Niece always says at times like this one should not go anywhere near the internet. I stupidly typed Bright Yellow Vomit Dogs into the Google. I am an idiot. YOUR DOG WILL DIE, it mostly said.

Luckily, the vet managed to fit her in at a moment’s notice. She has a horrid stomach bug. She has had two injections and is curled up under a blanket, doleful as hell. It was very sad going to the vet, because he was the one who saw The Duchess in her last days, so that rather brought all that up.

So on top of maddening technology battles I have mournful dog memory, and fret over my darling Pidge. We’re going back to the vet tomorrow, because he is not taking any chances.

All of which is a very long way of saying that there are no photographs today.

Well, except this one, which is one of the very few I have managed to transfer to my new machine. It was taken last year, but it is exactly the kind of mute yearny expression she is wearing today, poor little thing.

Hope things will be more normal tomorrow.