Bill Gates is Satan

Thursday. Thor’s Day – god of Thunder. Lightning strikes my computer, and all programs fail to work. Happily, data and articles and my store of words are still there. Backup system? Oh dear, it hasn’t been working since February. Always meant to see what was wrong with it, but it seemed like too much hassle. Hassle postponed... evil pounces.

Call from Dublin. Go North, interview rock star, write about it? Yes please, but on what? Spend hours trying to restore basic functionality. Repeated attempts to use rescue system result in grim insistence that there’s a hardware problem, but I know instinctively that this is not the case. I can’t connect to the Net – if I could connect to the Net, I could download patches and fixes and drivers and cobble it all together.

Spend hours using my neighbour’s computer, while she’s away on holidays, trying to download bits and pieces onto floppies, bring them back home, try them on my system, but it just keeps on hanging and freezing and telling me about runtime errors and failure to load device and that programs are not responding. Each time I start the computer, it takes five minutes as it goes through a slow self-checking process, that doesn’t work.

Friday. Capitulate, and pay money to Bill Gates. Buy latest version of Windows. Getting lost in Windows is hell – Bill Gates is Satan. That anyone should get so rich making a system that is so fundamentally fragile is a crime. That I should spend so much time staring at stark blue screens telling me the system is fucked, again and again: words are not enough. Dull impotence, rage, frustration. How dare technology have such an impact on my life. How dare it be beyond my control. How dare it be so demanding of care, a tedious, fiddly, repetitive, second-guessing cossetting.

Saturday. Train to Manchester. Cab at station – read out address of hotel I’ve written on back of envelope. “Do you know where that is?” I ask. “Russia,” he says. “Russia it is,” I say. Manchester in the rain like Dublin. Much more neon though. “I hate Pakistanis,” says driver, through window. “I wouldn’t have said that three years ago,” he says, “but that’s how I feel now! Arrogant bastards,” he says. Streets we’re driving through are full of Halal butchers and discount stores.

Arrive at hotel: Non-licensed, alcohol-free, no TV it displays proudly in a neon sign over the door. hotpress playing a joke. Dump bag in room with a computer printout on one of the walls, pointing way to Mecca. Back to town in same cab. Silence. Refuse tip at end, explaining how I found his racism offensive. He doesn’t care, he tells me, defeated and complacent. Poisoned somewhere deep inside.

Go to gig. Text-message all the folk in my mobile saying how fab it all is. Phone buzzes all night with responses. Drunken affectionate hand on my shoulder at end of gig, offering me brandy from a hipflask. Nice to see someone else enjoying it so much, he breathes into my ear. He is high as a kite. Shakes my hand as I leave. I want to cuddle him.

Go to Canal Street afterwards for first time, made famous in Queer As Folk. Not raining any more, sit on canal-side table, watching people promenade in their finery: seven-feet tall drag queens, leather clones, and boggle-eyed tourists. A couple of long-haired Vikings stumble towards the table beside me. Pissed as farts, they watch the world go by with me. Viking #1 is particularly hunky. Norwegians visiting friends for the football match.

They’re physically affectionate with each other in a drunken way, but not in a sexual way. Viking #1 tells me I’m like a Norwegian diamond, and drops a heavy tattooed hand on my leg. Slurred, he says: what has got ten inches and whistles? And he whistles. I manage a patronising smile. Come back to our room, they entreat me. Erm, no thanks. But I enjoy their ambiguity, their benign fumbling physicality. They mean no harm.

A group of young women pass by in high spirits. One of them, a stunning blonde of about 22 with skin like a nectarine, comes over to us. She scans all three, and pronounces: you’re sober, they’re not, you’re gay, they’re not. Guilty as charged, I say.

“This is my first time here,” she says with awe. She lives in the country. “I’ve never met a gay person before,” she says, shyly. “I want a gay friend,” she says, gathering courage. “Will you be my friend?”

I look at her. With the sort of looks that would make most heterosexual men forget all decency, I could see why she needed one. I imagine her working behind the counter in Boots in some generic dour Northern small town, dreaming of glamour. I live in London, I tell her. We both agree that that was sad, and off she stumbles with her mates to the next pub on their hen-night crawl.

Sunday. Go to posh country-club hotel in suburbs, fall in love with rock star, and tell him he has a lovely penis. A moment of triumph, politically. For the personal is political, haven’t you heard that one before? Train back home.

I can’t ignore my sick computer any more. Next three days are consumed entirely in the process of getting it back to work. Install new hard drive, as old one is full, and new Windows Me. Neither works first time – or even fourth time. System doesn’t recognise new hard drive. Eventually get update from neighbour’s computer to get it to connect. Installing new Windows fails – for a day, am stuck with neither the old version or the new version working. CD-ROM not being recognised, can’t install anything. Stumble around in DOS. Does anyone else know what I mean? Is there anyone out there? Existential despair a go-go, dialogue with an entity that only blinks and tells me C:\\> .

Hair-pulling, chain-smoking, Smiths-playing fury. Start again. And again. Eventually, something starts to go right, at 3 in the morning. Music comes from computer, sinister Bladerunner cyber-seduction, global economy at its worst. Capitalism’s worst fault is that it doesn’t work. And so to sleep. Another full day to get back online. Modem squeals back into life. A thousand emails await me, 95% spam. Subject lines of spam are becoming cleverer, forcing me repeatedly to read inane mind-corrosive junk. ‘Did you call me?’ or ‘Your sister said I should contact you’ or ‘Re: your order’, leading me to Americanese get-rich-quick schemes. There’s got to be a better way of living, a better way of spending time.

A simple life seems impossible. Pen, paper, and a window with a view of trees and sunshine.