Hug your radio close and think of Dave

A few weeks after the big, macho appliances have their 'look at me' day and break down, the minor electrical life forms decide it's their turn for a hissy fit.

The ancient radio in the bathroom goes all touchy feely on us, for reasons that are unclear but may be linked to an overdose of 'Woman's Hour', 'Archers' and 'Thought for the Day' - after all,too much Radio 4 certainly alternates my currents.

It will now work only when being lovingly squeezed round the middle with both hands.
Bonding with Sony in this intimate way is emotional for both of us, but it does make washing tricky, as the second you reach for the shampoo, the radio, sensing abandonment, cuts out.

I try to draft Deborah in as an emergency radio operator - inviting her to recreate some of the sense of excitement and danger of a spy transmitting in enemy territory. 'Eeugh!' she says, in response to the idea of sharing a room with a clothes-deficit mother.

Next, the computer picks up on the war theme and decides that, as a conscientious objector, it will no longer cooperate.

The new programme that has installed itself, uninvited, insists that it’s there simply to filter out junk. Then it takes against my mother in law’s e-mails and consigns them all to an electronic dustbin somewhere in cyberspace, meanwhile giving the green light to any spam, no matter how revolting or fraudulent. While I wade through reams of information from crooks - including many of Leon's friends from Megadik - who want to empty my bank account and enlarge every organ I possess, and some I don’t, her messages go unread and unanswered.

Then the printer has an anal retentive moment, getting half way through each sheet of A4 before deciding not to share, sucking it back up into its innards, then emitting a series of small, electronic belches and the occasional shower of slightly dirty confetti.

I ring Vicky for sympathy, but she has problems of her own. Dave has called her, ostensibly to ask how the seedlings are doing, but in fact to share the plans for his impending suicide.

"You can't kill yourself," she says anxiously. "You promised you'd put up the garden shed."

"You're quite right," he says. "OK. I won't. Not yet, anyway." Perhaps if I lent him my touch-deficit radio, it would take his mind off suicide. Though a surfeit of the current Archers plot line might simply accelerate the process.