Yesterday evening started well. I took the music drug, listening to a cassette I recorded my favourite music on in my teens. I'm prepared to be very very candid in blogs - partly because nobody is likely to read them! - but that does not extend to revealing some of the songs on that cassette, songs which I love to this day. The wildest of the bunch is undoubtedly "Everybody wants to rule the world" by Tears for Fears!

But then disaster. I will explain...

I would guess that all reasonably intelligent and clued-up people are savvy enough not to fall for common computer scams - usually the "Dear Friend" and broken english make them stand out a mile off - but I confess that last night I fell victim to one. What's this? My laptop is corrupted by trojan worm number 3145? It's critical???! Oh but wait, now I see a pop-up with a soothing official-looking logo informing me that this "critical" virus can and should be fixed straight away using that reassuring software. Just $59.99 would crush this worm (just the word makes one flinch). It was late, I was tired, my internet had stopped working - as it does periodically - so I couldn't check the saviour's reputation, and besides I was shit scared and wanted peace of mind: no nightmares about serpents devouring my laptop.

So I paid the money and when the internet eventually started to work I decided to see what this "Personal Antivirus" as it styled itself actually was. Google it now and you will see.

After buying some genuine spyware, I finally got rid of it but by then it was 3am which no doubt accounts for my extreme tiredness tonight.