Thank whatever deity you believe in for that ...

..... Christmas is over. No, I'm not doing the Bah Humbug thing, Christmas as an entity is fine, even if you're areligious (that's probably not a word, but as far as I'm concerned it is now). It's just the nonsense of trying to persuade one child to turn off the frigging playstation and relate to the rest of humanity from a point below eleven out of ten on the anger scale for once in his life, and the other child to stop dragging her duvet, blanket, the shirt I was wearing in bed last night and her two rabbit teddies with her wherever she goes so that she can be properly snuggly, and put on some freaking clothes before tea time.

I'm an ace parent, me.

So, you will appreciate, it was with considerable relief that I packed them both off to school this morning. I then got stuck into a stack of utterly mundane stuff that doesn't earn any money but has to be done. I phoned the airport car park people to say that they had confirmed the wrong time for my departure: it's twelve midday and they've put 00:00. The bloke who answered the phone twenty minutes later informed me that nah, this was 00:00 pm, and that was lunchtime, so everything's okay, innit. There is no such time as 00:00 pm, even on a twenty-four hour clock. I know this, you know this: he didn't know this. I can quite clearly see how their computer system could be set up so that this could happen, and like an idiot tried to explain this to him. Gave up, inevitably, after several brave but fruitless efforts. I will learn one day, I will.

So, I try and get this PC to turn on this morning. It appears that the LOML has pressed the little crescent moon symbol again, which means that the computer is dozing but not fully asleep, and that a little jiggle of the cordless mouse thus ... should set it working again. But no. This never works. The PC is now awake, but Mr Screen he stay black. The LOML knows this. I told her about this, again, as recently as last week. So, I hard boot the PC with the 'Off' button, wait for it to load everything up again, decline to send a report about recovering from a serious error to Microsoft, reconnect to the interweb, delete several messages from people enquiring whether I wish to buy Cialis cheaply, and write this.

You want my advice?

Never sneeze while you're hiding.