Oh beloved laptop...

My laptop power cable melted and snapped (surely this should not happen? ), so I have been without my laptop for these past three days. Yes, this has been a very terrible time for me.

I have purchased a new cable instead of paying my Council Tax (sorry, Government). Oh, nothing describes the joy of being able to touch my lovely laptop again, type and tickle its keys with my fingertips and listen to it click and whirr while the blackness spools out on the white and blue lights flash and everything is ok in the world again!

The new cable feels quite hot already.

I tried writing on paper while I had no laptop and found it was possible, but all my pens are pencil crayons or those tiny blue biro's my dad nicked from the bookies or Argos or a midget and, well I just missed the cold clinical feel of typing into a box.

It was good not to be distracted by the Internet, I suppose. No, that's bollocks, I hated it. I need the Internet, especially as I was supposed to be emailing and adminning for my Short Story Prize all week. Now I have half a week instead of one week to do that. Still, never say die. I ended up feeling all frustrated and trapped and reading lots of WWII Escape memoir yarns. Yes, my three days without laptop was pretty much like being shot down over France and being captured by the Gestapo and tortured and sentenced to death as a spy, but being saved from the firing squad by the Luftwaffe and sent to Stalag Luft II, then spending the next three years tunnelling my way out ('Under the Wire').

But I wouldn't call myself a hero. I was just doing what needed to be done.

The power cable is very hot now.