New neighbour, recently arrived in this country, charming, mild-mannered, Eastern European, rang the doorbell as I was about to finish long overdue piece.

Cursing, I went to open the door, expecting it to be one of the numerous meter readers who seem to come to read the meter every other day since no one seems to know who supplies who with what power and who reads the meter for that particular company.

I was immediately embarrassed, having assumed hostile face to greet meter reader with, to find Mr Majetski (not his real name but we couldn't quite work out what it was and it sounded like majesty but a bit more Polish so the Rugrats immediately decided on Majetski and that has stuck). Mr Majetski was wearing an expression of concerned anxiety.

"Oh, Hello!" I said, hastily removing scowl from face to make him feel welcome in a country in which he has only recently arrived. "How nice to see you."

"I hope I am not disturbing you," said Mr Majetski. "But I was worried you might be in some sort of trouble."

"Trouble?" I queried, thinking he'd spent too many of his formative years listening out for secret police and hadn't yet got to grips with the fact that, while numerous credit card companies hold more information on us than any police state could ever wish for, our concept of Big Brother was limited to the TV show.

"Please forgive me but the walls are very thin," he continued. "And I heard you shouting and wondered if perhaps you had been disturbed. But I don't want to intrude.

"Oh, shouting," I said, adding, by way of entirely adequate explanation: "I was shouting at my computer."

"Please?" he said (or asked), the single word indicating he didn't understand.

I gestured towards the computer in former boot cupboard now home office.

"I work from home and my computer wouldn't print so I was shouting at it."

"Ah, I understand," he replied, looking more confused than ever. "Well, if you are okay I should be going. I'm very sorry to have disturbed you."

"Not at all, thank you for your concern," I said, thinking it best not to go into details of how I was used to working in office of large company, with whole basement full of IT people whose many tasks included coming running every time computer-illiterate journalists found their ink had run out or a file wouldn't open and sort it out for them.

And, having got used to this level of service, I was finding it hard to become accustomed to having to sort any technical problems with home office equipment by self and therefore vented frustration at situation by shouting at computer.

This morning, having finally finished long overdue article, I had hoped to print it up but was firmly told by computer monitor that it could not access printer.

Shouting that the printer was on the shelf above it, where it always was, and even picking it up to show it, had no effect - so finally had to resort to calling very expensive Mac hotline (run by Apple, rather than McDonald's) in Idaho or some such long-distance call location.

After about fifteen minutes (at £1 a minute) of being told to close and open files, reboot and repin and stuff like that, the boffin in Idaho asked if the printer was switched on.

It was not, which was apparently the cause of all my problems.