An ordinary afternoon in the office – nothing but the sound of PC fans, clicking keys and light snoring – when suddenly, disaster struck. At first, there were just a few “hmm”s and queries along the line of “is your email working?”

Gradually, the full horror sank in. No. Internet.

Clearly, our concern was not that we couldn’t do any work. No, being unable to work is a minor inconvenience compared with no email and no access to BBC news. We did at least try to work but it became increasingly clear this was a non-starter

“It’s okay – i have the details on my screen. I can send them to you”
“uh huhhhhh – and you’re going to do that how exactly?”
“i’ll email them to … ah”
“ah indeed”
“Well, i’ll print them out.”
“That would be on the network printer?”
“yes it would … oh. I know, i’ll copy them to your PC”
“over the network”
“over the network, I can…oh ferfuxake”

The worrying thing is how reliant we all are on the internet. Meetings had to be reorganised by phone as the details were held on email. This would have been substantially easier if the phone numbers weren’t also helpfully stored on a network server.

All this was a bit of an eye opener. My daily toil is partly spent thinking of fail safes and backup plans and ways to avoid things not working. bit frightening that a failure in ONE part of our system can render teh whole department useless. I’m going prepared tomorrow – i’m taking a book