I've been framed

Last week I was wrenched from my slumber by a mad figure careering around my room shouting obscenities. I sat up in bed with a start and realised that I was in my room at my parents' house and the figure was my mother.

Mummy Dearest: ...want to know what the fuck you've done to my fucking laptop...
Our Glamorous Heroine: Wuh? Laptop?
MD: I can't fucking turn it on and I don't know how to wake your brother to deal with it!

And it dawned on me. I'd used my mother's laptop the previous evening as I hadn't brought mine from Cambridge. I searched my still sleep-addled brain for any clues as to what I could possibly have done to it.

Now, my mother is a writer and so her laptop is understandably extremely important to her. That is why, once I'd finished on it, I asked her how it should be shut down. Just how you normally shut down a computer? I asked and she said yes. So I went to the start menu and pressed the familiar red button. Mistake.

MD: You've shut it down wrong and I can't fucking get into it. I need to do my fucking work.
OGH: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do anything to it, I just...
MD: The only fucking constant I need in my life is being able to get into my fucking laptop...

Information swam back to me as I regained consciousness. She had an imminent deadline with her agent. I probably wasn't as clear as I could have been when asking how I should shut it down. Nothing makes a writer more angry than not being able to write. That scene in The Shining when Jack Nicholson has a go at his wife for interrupting him when he's working at the type writer ("Whenever l'm in here. . . and you hear me typing. . . or whatever the fuck you hear me doing in here. . . when l'm in here, that means l am working. That means don't come in. Do you think you can handle that? Fine. Why don't you start right now and get the fuck out of here?") could be documentary fact as far as my experience with writers goes. I'd fucked up big time. I decided to duck and cover and weather out the storm.

My mother finally left my room with a slam of the door and a shout of, "And don't ever go near my laptop ever again!" No fear of that, thought I, and very definitely remembered to bring my laptop down with me when I came back at the weekend. So, when this morning I heard a scream that Grendel's mother would have been proud of emanating from my mother's room I ignored it. Nothing to do with me, I thought. Mistake. I've written before about how technology has conspired against me and it appears that it has happened again. As my mother was leaving the house she gave me a steely glare.

MD: You've fucked up my laptop up again.
OGH: I haven't been anywhere near it.
MD: Well it wouldn't turn on, exactly the same way as last time, and then it said that you were logged on.
OGH: I don't know why that is because I really haven't been on it. I've got my laptop so why would I want to use yours?
MD: Well it says Elizabeth is logged on and I don't know any other Elizabeths who would be on it.
OGH: I promise I haven't been on it, seriously.
MD: Well you were on it last week and that's started all this. Just don't fucking break other peoples' stuff. You obviously left bad seeds on it.
OGH:...

I didn't ask if that was a technical term or if Nick Cave had been there with the 'bad seeds'. I just resigned myself to the fact that the laptop had planted my finger prints all over a crime I didn't commit and so I must endure another dose of writers' wrath. I bloody hate technology.