:: crash bang wallop

Every now and then, something major goes haywire at exactly the worst moment possible.

Like when I was trying to sell my flat and the kitchen sink blocked up and the plumber couldn't fix it and said he would have to tear down the whole wall to get at the drains and I had to wash the dishes in the bath for a week.

Or the time when Trevor and Jenny and Liz and Ken were over from New Zealand for the festive season and while we were all away visiting Mull and Iona in the snow one of my pipes froze and burst and flooded the whole downstairs and my neighbour had to get the police to break in and turn the water off and I had to find an emergency plumber at 10pm on December 30.

Well, it's happened again. First of all, I lost all my bank cards on Sunday night. A major inconvenience but not a disaster (not like the time my credit card was stolen right out of my purse in Sainsburys and the thief went on a spending spree before I could get to a phone). I called the bank, cancelled the cards and ordered new ones, and went to bed in a relaxed mood.

When I got up the next morning I found that my laptop had died in the night. My beautiful Sony Vaio, only 16 months old, stone dead. It only had a year's warranty, so this really is a disaster. Sony is showing its true colours - it cost me 35p a minute to call the helpline, for example - it's local rates when you're under warranty. I called the Sony Centre and described the tests I'd done & they said to bring it in. So I drove all the way in, paid for parking and waited ... and guess what they said? It's dead. Call the helpline.

The helpline (at a cost of almost £6) told me it was a board fault and would cost £560 to fix. They have a tiered charge system and this is the highest level of fault. For £560 I can get a whole new laptop, I wailed. Yes, you probably can, said the helpline boy. Oh, and there's another thing: Sony won't guarantee it won't have to wipe the hard drive.

So now I'm in a quandry. I can get a new laptop for that much, but it wouldn't be so gorgeous and sleek and lovely. But then if I get Sony to fix my dead one, it might break down again - maybe it's a lemon. And whatever I do, I have to first get my files off the broken computer (yeah, yeah, I know I should have backed up every day, I'm an idiot). And I can't do anything about that because I've got no cards and no money.

So actually, it turns out that losing my cards wasn't such a bad thing after all. It has forced me to think long and hard about the whole thing. I've moved my old desktop back downstairs, and I've been doing some online research. I might be able to get the files off the laptop myself, but I've discovered that a bloke who used to be in IT at work has started his own repair business, and his rates are not bad so I might get him to do it. Especially since I've been trying to rewire the hedge trimmer for the past two days (I trimmed through the cable last year) and haven't managed to get it working yet.

The other good thing about not having cards/cash is that I've had to taking my own dinners in to work - I'd gotten into a very bad habit of eating stodgy canteen meals every day. I'm going to keep up the home cooking too, I've been enjoying having decent healthy food every day.

Anyway, the replacement cards have all arrived. I haven't got the PINs yet so no cash, but I've managed to get groceries.

Next week I should be able to decide what to do about the laptop. I really, really loved having one and I miss it. I loved being able to take it on holiday with me, I loved writing emails in bed, I loved watching films on it, I loved lying on the sofa reading Popbitch while downloading mp3s. So I think I will either get a repair or a replacement even though I still have the desktop.

This time though, I'll do my research.

In other news, the wormery finally arrived, a fortnight after I ordered it despite a claim of "**PRIORITY DELIVERY**!". The poor wee worms were sealed in a plastic bag with a bit of compost in it, and a lot of them were dead. So I wrote and complained and they sent me some more worms, which arrived today. Sealed in a plastic bag, in an ordinary envelope. Not even a padded bag! I should report them to the RSPCA.

There isn't much worm activity so far, and they don't seem to have eaten much of the rubbish I've given them, so I've brought the bin inside. It's been in the shed, but although it's not been too cold lately a bit of quality warmth might help the worms get established. Hope they don't start creeping around the house looking for extras.

And finally: some really good news. Faye has at last sold her Milton house, hurrah. She's faxed off all the paperwork so should be debt-free very soon. She's really excited about it, as you can imagine.