The Chinese call it Yin and Yang, Newton named it his Third Law -for every action there is an equal and opposite re-action -, lovers know it as opposites attract and Murphy called it Sod's law, or was it Sod who called it Murphy's law? In my case, I called it every name under the sun!

What am I talking about? Computers, that's what I'm talking about, and how I went from a happy chappy full of the joys of spring summer to a dire winter of discontent in the time it took to open an envelope and then turn on my PC.

'I am delighted to take you on as a client with our agency and enclose a contract for you to sign and return forthwith,' began the letter from the literary agent I had been in discussions with for several weeks.

'I've got an agent,' was my initial subdued response, followed by, 'I'VE GOT AN AGENT!' accompanied by lots of rather childish whooping. 'There's always room for a good whoop in life,' as my granddad used to say - before he died of a bad cough.

'Well done. That's brilliant,' said my wife, Gillian.

'I'd better send...' I paused because it sounded so odd, 'my agent an email; to say I've received it and will sign it today. I raced upstairs to my study and switched on my computer.

The usual indecipherable techie boot screens flashed up on the monitor, only this time I waited in vain for the familiar XP logo and the loading status bar that flashed like a Cylon's eyes in Battlestar Galactica. Bill Gates was obviously too busy with his charity work these days.

Instead, I got a message that simply said, 'You ain't got no hard drive, mate.'

'Yes I have,' I said. I re-booted.

'Doh! Don't you listen? You ain't got one of those data storage thingies known as a hard drive, bozo.'

I re-re-booted.

'Look dipstick...'

I switched it off, waited 5 seconds, said a prayer, then switched it back on.

'I'm still here, donkey brain...unlike your hard drive!'

I inserted my Windows XP repair disc and switched the PC off then on again.

Whirr......(yes!).........whirrrr........(yess!).......whirrrrrrr........(yessss!)

'Good evening, sir. I'm your Windows XP repair assistant. I'm afraid my rather blunt colleague is correct. You don't have a hard drive.'

'That's what I told 'im earlier. Would he listen? Would he thump!'

'No hard drive is like having a car without an engine, sir. Your PC won't run. I suggest you go buy one and be sure to have a professional mechanic fit it. Thank you, and have a nice day.'

Noooooo!

When a writer has a broken PC, a pen and paper just won't hack it. It also instantly turns a writer into an idle thinker. I was forced to initiate my total disaster plan. At this point, an obvious question was ringing in my ears, 'Have you got backups of all your files?' Of course I had, I wasn't that stupid.

Returning downstairs, I borrowed my wife's laptop, and inserted my 'specially imported from China which is why they're able to sell it so amazingly cheap' 8gB memory stick, and bingo, up popped all my files. It was only when I tried to view them that I discovered half were corrupted. A surf on the internet to discover how to uncorrupt files popped up this friendly warning:

Never buy cheap memory sticks from a country that also sells fake Viagra. They make out it will be much bigger than it actually is, when in fact it will remain the size of a floppy!

That was when the real panic set in. The thought still gives me palpitations. In fact, to save my blood boiling as I write this, I'll skip forward several days and take a few deep calming breaths...

...there, that's better. I now have a brand new PC. Everyone say 'Ahhhh.' The professional mechanic I took the old one to managed to recover my data off the hard drive - which was there after all but had suffered a major breakdown, I know the feeling.

Therefore I'm a writer once again as evidenced by this post.

In future I've decided to take my Yin without any Yang, Newton will no longer be getting a re-action out of me, and as for Murphy's law...sod him!