"Bad news," said one of my colleagues. "We think you've got a virus."

Isat down, stunned. Why me?

"I don't know how or when it happened," I blurted out. "Has anyone else got it yet?"

Fortunately not, I was told, but pretty radical action was going to be taken to eliminate mine.

"Perhaps you'd better go upstairs for a cup of coffee while we deal with it," they suggested.

Ifelt ashamed, embarrassed. "Am I likely to lose anything?" I asked. "You might..." they said.

Those of you who have never used a computer have little idea of the fear the word "virus" evokes.

Icould no more explain to you how these "bugs" are created than I could recite the Russian alphabet, but an outbreak can cause chaos not just on your own computer but on millions throughout the world.

Computer viruses, unlike the human kind, are given nicknames, personalities, and even a sex - a bit like hurricanes. Melissa is probably the most famous to emerge in recent weeks.

My unwelcome visitor was male, however, going by the name of Ethan, and had burrowed undetected into my computer files. From there it had started to reproduce, like some alien life form.

Idid, however, feel extremely concerned for the welfare of my computer. It was as if a relative or friend were ill with some mysterious malady.

In some ways your computer is only a machine, in others it's your closest colleague. You certainly spend more time with it than the people you work around and naturally you build up a relationship with the wretched thing. In my case, I talk to it, curse it - and am completely dependent upon it. It is, I suppose, an extension of myself.

Which is why I shouldn't really have been so taken aback when people in the office spoke about Vanora's Virus and sent me memos referring to "your" virus, as if I was personally infected and infectious.

For the sake of everyone's health - well, computer health - I was warned not to send possibly contaminated material or disks from my computer to anyone else's, including my own at home.

"Ah, he's back is he?" said a friend who works for one of the big banks after I had confessed to her that I had acquired a virus. Seems Ethan started circulating in this country around February time but had been lying dormant, in true virus fashion, for the past few weeks.

Ethan, she said, was a bit of a joker, an irritation rather than potentially dangerous virus, a bit like athlete's foot. It was comforting to know that I wasn't the only one who had caught this particular bug.

Anyway, my computer has now been successfully debugged and everything appears to be back to normal - spellchecking device still asking me if I wouldn't prefer to substitute "Dear Alligator" for "Dear Alistair" and "tossing the khyber" for "tossing the caber" (two recent gems).

Yes, the old days of hand-written letters and typewriters may have been less traumatic but boy, were they dull, compared to the challenges of modern technology!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.