Can we just have a moments silence please, I have to report another passing….

….I’m afraid this time I’ve killed the works printer and I certainly can’t flush that down the toilet.

I think we must have had a power surge over the weekend and as well as taking the server down, it did something to the printer too. Obviously with no server I didn’t use the printer yesterday and it wasn’t until Dilys came in this morning and pointed out that the light wasn’t on did it dawn on me that something was wrong. Yes, Mrs Observant, that's me.

Now I said yesterday that work is manic (understatement of the year that one) and I really was rushing around this morning, my health is crap for want of a better word and I’m not firing on all cylinders as the saying goes – that’s my defence in case you were wondering.

When the power fails on something my first port of call is to change the power lead – I always keep spares in a drawer, so I got one out and plugged it into the back of the printer. I then crawled under the desk to the extension lead, unplugged the old cable and replugged the new one in.

With hindsight, I think it would have been a really good idea at this point to switch the extension lead off at the mains first. As I pushed the plug in sparks leaped from it and there was a God Almighty loud ‘bang’ from somewhere in the vicinity of the printer. It scared the bloody life out of me, I jumped a mile – forgetting I was under the desk and nearly knocking myself out in the process.

Not the safest of things to do I’ll admit and it really shuck me up but at least I managed to laugh about it. It was either that or cry and I came perilously close to doing just that – it didn’t do a lot to help my asthma I can tell you. I was holding on to my sense of humour by the skin of my teeth and if I hadn’t been emailing Cobweb & Scally I think I’d have settled for the hysterics and tears. I mean what a stupid eejit I'd been (and isn't that the truth, why didn't I switch the lead off first?) - so I settled for a joke instead about flushing it down the loo.

I was on IM with Pooks at the time (still ill by the way) when it really started to sink in that I could have electrocuted myself - she told me to calm down and breath slowly, in and out, concentrate on my breathing. Who was she kidding? In between coughing I was desparetly trying to suck on my inhaler as if my life depended on it, whilst trying to stop my hands shaking. And I was scared, the adrenaline had obviously kicked in with the shock - it wasn't even a major asthma attack; I've had much, much, worse, I was just panicking. Dilys by the way, having fallen back on the 'I'll get you a cup of tea and everything will be OK again' emergency plan as no one else was around to assist. Yes, leave the Office Manager in charge of the company, everything will be fine; she'll just try and kill herself. You know, I may just remember the next time to turn the power off at the mains first - make way, biiigggg learning curve coming through.

So the printer has departed this mortal earth and we’ve ordered another from PC World – well, it helps keep someone in a job, doesn’t it?

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Good Old or Young Arnold - not sure which as we didn’t get to the point of discussing ages. But credit to him, the pop-ups are gone and the site is back to normal – I am once again a paying customer at Tripod, although I can’t quite believe the time and effort that it’s taken just to get a company to take my money off me. I do wonder if other site owners have had the same problem or whether it’s more the fact that it’s me and I don’t ever appear to do anything the easy way, no matter how hard I try. Never mind, it’s working now and I’ve emailed him back one last time to say thank you for his help.

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One more note of thanks to add – thank you to all the people who have taken the time to drop Pooks an email. I think she had got to the point that a lot of new writers get to, when you ask yourself ‘Why bother? No one ever says anything’. Well this time you have and it’s both appreciated and encouraging. The muse bunny is back in Ireland and on a mission to write a new series and maybe even a further chapter of Harry and Sam if we’re lucky.