That machine to the left of the picture is my work PC. It could have red eyes, a pointy tail and predilection for singing Handel’s arias through my window at four in the morning and I couldn’t hate it any more than I do.

That’s right hate. Which is strange because it’s an inanimate object and hating it is ridiclous, but more so because I’m actually quite a placid person. I’m too cynical to ever be angry and I don’t drink enough coffee to be short tempered. I was born floating on a lilo with a cocktail in my hand, booking a holiday to Venice.

But I spend many, many hours at this machine and it endeavours to make each one a special torment. And It works in much the same way I imagine the devil might: not though sweeping strokes of evil that destroy villages and send buses hurtling over cliffs, but through a myriad of tiny irritants that scratch at my soul and leave it in tatters by the end of the day. The fifteen minutes it takes to start at the beginning of the day, for example. Or the twenty seconds it takes to open every application. The sheer uncertainty that accompanies the routine – how long will it take to paste this paragraph into a new document today, seconds, minutes, hours? The fact that it crashes more times than a fifteen year old driving a Ferrari. Each of these tiny torments nibbles at my calm, like a starving rat chewing on bloated finger

 Amazingly, however, I only really started noticing any of this after I bought my new laptop (pictured on the left) which would embarrass the USS Enterprise in a drag race. Word 2007 springs into the life the very second I decide I need it. I don’t even need to click the icon half the time, hell, most days I don’t even have to be in the same room. Outlook updates without my machine suffering the technological equivalent of a heart attack.  It does what I need it to instantly and the moment I start using it, my entire mood changes. My claws withdraw back into my hands, my wings retract and the flames die in my eyes. I become a person again.

I’ve never acknowledged before how great an impact my computer has on my mood, and I’m beginning to wonder just how much office stress across the country is caused by technology not doing what it’s told. If we had an ability to create an office stress heat map I guarantee the area around the printer would be as red as Satan’s armpit after a long game of squash. The new swear words I’ve learned from people waiting for it to warm up could be compiled into an entirely new dictionary. 

Which makes me wonder if maybe I’m not too dependent on my computer, or perhaps I just need that holiday.