Captcha codes, for anybody not au fait with this peculiar torment, are the codes you have to enter to add comments to blogs or download things, or pretty much do any of the hundred little tasks that make the internet worthwhile. If you’re particularly keen to see one, it’s the thing that will bug you before you post a comment on this here blog. They’re intended to stop bots from signing up for millions of email addresses and swamping the planet in a Viagra blizzard. Essentially, they’re the gatekeepers to the online world, and they’re bloody irritating.

At what point did Captcha’s lords and masters decide that making them completely indecipherable was the way forward? If anything, Captchas have made me side with the bots. We have a common enemy, and if a bot can read the squiggles and inkblots that make up a modern Captcha code, then good for them. It deserves the email account. I’ll throw it a parade. Personally, I can’t even begin to comprehend the damn things. Captcha codes are long past telling humans from bots, they’re now only useful for judging the psychological state of the person entering the comment.

I reckon that’s why most commentators on blogs and forums are so rude and abusive. They’re probably perfectly placid before they get to the Captcha; just ready to make some lovely comment about the weather or the football, but five minutes of infuriating code bashing later and they’re psychopaths.

I remember receiving a letter from a reader on this very subject and palming him off with some vague reasoning that Captchas are the best solution to a tricky problem. I was wrong. I apologise to him profusely. It’s this kind of appeasement that got Neville Chamberlain in trouble, and I won’t tolerate it. Captchas are my nemesis and I want them destroyed. Replaced with something else, anything else. Hell, I’d rather offer a blood sample every time than enter another Captcha.

Clearly, I’m at breaking point. I was driven to this in my attempts to sign up for a Yahoo account. At the end of the information form I was asked to confirm that I had a soul by entering a Captcha. I got it wrong and the entire form reset. That happened three times. Three times of re-entering the same flipping information and smashing into the same aggravating roadblock. Even gangsters stop after breaking three of your fingers, but Captchas never stop. Ever.

Now admittedly, given that the snow has reduced London to a cannibalistic war zone, with its once happy residents huddled in their homes with shotguns – or so the news would have you believe – there are bigger problems that Captchas. But, the devil doesn’t send you to hell with one big blowout, it’s the general drip feed of daily irritants that send your twitchy fingers creeping towards the axe. Please tell me this isn’t just me. Please tell me I’m not alone in hating the little buggers. Please, tell me I’m not going mad. Please…