About 6 months ago, Jenny said she needed a laptop. I had an iBook which was 4 months old. I fancied a G4 Powerbook. So I sold her the iBook for a knockdown price.

Of course, about a month ago it started misbehaving. I think it's a mechanical fault in the trackpad. I'm still within the year guarantee, but the procedure of actually sending the thing back to Apple involves calling them whenever the fault happens (it's annoyingly intermittent) and having long conversations with staff at an Irish call centre who ask me to try some other solution (which i've already tried) and then telling me that THEIR computer system is down. Which obviously fills me with confidence. I feel like talking them through their computer problem. “OK, now, are you sitting in front of the machine? Have you switched it on? Good, now, you see the illuminated panel in front of you? That's the screen, and…” etc. etc.

Anyway, Jenny is being remarkably sanguine about the fact that I sold her faulty goods for 800 quid, but obviously I feel somewhat responsible. So I'm up far too early surrounded by system disks, hammers and chisels.

Apple's system disks are not labelled “Disk 1″, “Disk 2″, “Disk 3″ etc – rather there's a little illustration on each disk of 1, 2, or 3 CDs. And when it prompts you to insert the disk it shows you on screen a picture of the CD you need to insert, saying “insert the CD which matches this illustration”. What a lot of absurd f*cking around. I appreciate that Apple are keen on sleek, chic design, but we've coped with Roman numerals since, uh, Roman times, and I understand these based-10 counting symbols are internationally recognised. Bingo. Next they'll produce an instruction manual with each letter of the alphabet replaced by some 3D icon of a man doing semaphore.

Last night I watched Sex In The City for the first time, and I'm appalled to say that I thought it was really good.