Daylight Robbery

'Hmmm...', I pondered to myself in the small computer shop last Saturday, as my mother completed her purchase of a brand new laptop (finally...). '£29.99 for 80gb or £39.99 for 160gb. Which one shall I go for? Ah, never mind, I'll get a hard drive and back up all my stuff next week.'.

That fateful thought process promptly retreated to the Filing Cabinet of Bad Decisions (F.C.B.D.) deep inside my brain, where it lay dormant for exactly four days, six hours and twenty-five minutes. Last night, under the cover of darkness, it quietly opened the middle drawer, jumped out, tiptoed its way out of my head, shuffled down my back until, clinging onto my belt with one straining hand, it bit me in the ass hard and good.

I was sitting in Caffè Nero near Covent Garden yesterday evening, about to submit my friend and French language pupil to her first test. My mood was buoyant, sadistic even, as I uncapped my red pen in gleeful (and misplaced) anticipation of carrying out some swashbuckling corrections. The test began, our expressions earnest and thoughtful, the concentration intense.

At 20:00, the test successfully completed and marked, we got ready to leave for the second half of Holy Wednesday, dinner at the bar in our local French bistro, our oasis of calm in this troubled world. I looked down from my stool and was pole-axed by what I saw, or rather did not see.

Had a photo of our table been taken at both 19:00 and 20:00, a short but easy game of Spot The Difference would have cruelly revealed the most ironic twist of fate since Alanis Morissette found herself owning ten thousand spoons when all she wanted was a knife (and some good medication for her terminal case of cutlery fetish): I had had my laptop stolen at some point during our French lesson, a mere four days after deciding against buying a hard drive in order to back up all my files.

In. My. Face.

Thus vanished into the ether approximately six years of memories, photos, video clips, short stories, personal notes and other assorted mementoes of my past. From the 2002 World Cup in Korea to wearing a Mongolian warrior's costume in Ulaan-Bataar, from the wild nights of Amelia House to the D-Day beaches of Normandy, me holding a Geiger counter fifty metres from the decomposed reactor core at Chernobyl, me in Red Square, inside the Grand Canyon, sailing a boat in Croatia or watching cricket at the MCG. Gone. All gone.

The one comforting factor in this short tale of treachery and misery is that I can at least find solace in the fact that the £20 obtained from the immediate street corner resale of my laptop was undoubtedly given to charity or contributed towards a programme of sustainable agriculture in northern Sudan, and not used to buy a two-litre bottle of White Lightning (9,4%, try it with muesli at breakfast to kickstart your day), 20 filterless Benson & Hedges and a dirty wrap of heroin cut with washing powder.

I am trying hard to stay true to my very simple life philosophy - as soon as something happens, be it good or bad, it is in the past and cannot be changed: understand, learn and move on. But the bitter truth is that I feel more deflated than an International Hot Air Balloon Race Meeting flying over the Great Britain National Archery Centre on 'Free Arrows Day'...

I am hurting.