'Normal service has resumed...' - or has it?

So - how much do you think that you use a computer?

How much do you think that you need a computer?

Until the events of the past few weeks I probably would have answered along the lines of 'well, not that much really' and 'not at all, after all we did ok before they were invented didn't we?'

Oh dearie dearie me...

It turns out that - rather like most of us I suspect - I use a computer a lot more than I thought that I did. A hell of a lot more than I though that I did. Not all day every day (honest!) but there's always something to do isn't there? Do you order things from places like Amazon? I do. You do as well? That's tricky without a computer, or at the very least one of those new-fangled smartphones. But you kinda need a computer if you've got one of those don't you, for syncing (now there's a word that none of us used until comparatively recently) and all that other stuff... and do you pay your household bills online? Your car insurance? All those other bills and things that we pay for almost without realising it because you're not actually handing over money and therefore it doesn't feel as though you're actually spending anything? Yep, me too. So does that mean that I, or indeed you, 'need' a computer? Can we (gulp!) really not live without one?

Well let's put it this way - I'm typing this somewhat hesitantly on an iPad that I've rather wildly just bought myself as my ageing MacBook has had to go back to the menders after not quite doing what it's supposed to do... after years of being permanently bunged up with several days worth of noisy rock 'n' roll music the hard drive finally gave up the ghost at the start of November - I took it to my friendly neighbourhood computer repair people who have fitted a new hard drive and restored it to it's former glory. And that, as they say, was that. Except of course, it wasn't. Things are never quite that simple are they? Attempts by your humble narrator to 'restore the last backup' (the things that you hear yourself say these days eh?) have sadly proved fruitless so I've had to get a grown-up - or indeed, a young person - to help me. I feel like Fred Flintstone sometimes. 'Twas ever thus. 

In the meantime I've realised that I do indeed 'need' a computer (or at least something very like one) these days, hence the appearance of the iPad. It's been an interesting 3-or-so weeks - I've gigged with Ruts D.C., T.V. Smith, Department S, Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks and more, shared stages with the likes of The Damned, The Vapors and Eddie And The Hot Rods, worked a fair bit in Balcony Shirts, seen the David Bowie musical 'Lazarus', held a python and a tarantula in a haunted pub in Devon (oh yes!) and probably lots more besides (there's been updates etc on my Facebook page which you can see here if you're interested in such things) but somehow it's all taken place to a backdrop of me thinking things like 'I wonder if they've fixed my computer yet?'. Strange but true. And I still haven't got the bloody thing back...