Tony Jolley (17th June 1958 / England)

Plugged in, powered up,
Clicked-on, dropped down,
Zoomed in, scrolled up
I-conned, let down
Frozen cursored, screen stuck,
No escape, my luck.

(That’s ‘luck’ as opposed to a f-f-familiar rhyme
You’ll surely have used in moments like mine)

Do I want to send an error message?
No I bloody well don’t
Even if I wanted to,
The computer damn well won’t.

Control-Alt- Delete - what stupid command
To crash a system in trouble unplanned.

May I make a few suggestions?
What about one nice, new:
‘Beam me up, Scotty’,
‘Go sit down and have a nice cup of tea while I sort this out for you’,
‘Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring! ’
‘Are you sitting comfortably…? Then we’ll begin (again) ’
Button.
I’d even go so far as to be not too unhappyish with one that said:
‘Sorry about that, I’m as confused as you are, I’ll see what I can do
(but I’m not promising anything) ’.

Is it too much too ask Mr Microsoft-in-the-head
For the merest bit of humanity in adversity? …
(Like Heineken) …Probably.

All that just to face the fear
Of the empty page.
The final frontier.

I’m told there is a non-PC way
Of writing available offline today
They call it something like ‘paper and pen’
I’ll be off to try some then….