According to Roger, am an antisocial arsonist.

When I pointed out to him that technically this was a pleonasm, as no one has ever heard of an arsonist who was lighting fires for the greater good of the wider community (unless of course you count the people who burn the stubble off crops after harvest so the land can be reused to provide food for the masses) he added pedantic to the list of unflattering attributes he was gathering, as if to prove he too could play around with big words beginning with P.

Roger is a graphologist (or handwriting expert, to you and I) to whom I have had to submit example of handwriting for piece have been bullied into writing by editor of Sunday paper.

Said editor so unimpressed by short paragraph I had had to hand-write at end of article I faxed her after printer packed up, that she phoned almost immediately to commission piece about what hand writing says about personality.

Not a lot in my case, obviously, though in my defence, Roger works mainly for the Met and is therefore used to looking for telltale signs of a tendency towards arson, murder, terrorism and other such anti-social activities. So you could say he was biased before he had even started.

Anyway, I now have to find two more examples of disparate handwriting for Roger to scrutinise so I can write piece, illustrated by four examples of handwriting of four different characters.

Editor supplied the fourth herself and Roger ensured himself work at the paper whenever he wants. He said her particularly rounded vowels showed she was mature, though not necessarily old, intelligent, emotionally advanced and had a capacity to absorb a lot of information.

Thomas, who got me into this in the first place by giving me the lakes and mountains screensaver, which has corrupted entire computer and caused death of printer, was the obvious choice to put his handwriting on the line.

Actually, as he is rather erratic, his handwriting tends not to hit the line at all. Roger was, however, nevertheless impressed; saying Thomas was magnanimous, caring, put his own needs after those of others and probably suffered personally as a result ...

After hearing this, I had little choice but to take a break from writing the piece and sort out my printer, lest anyone else find out that I am an anti-social arsonist who is surrounded by magnanimous, mature and generous people and causes them much suffering.

After failing to get any response from it myself, I was forced to call George Clooney lookalike Mac doctor and explain that it was a matter of some urgency as, not only could I not print, my character was being rapidly blackened by those who could.

George came round immediately, sorted printer and helped me finish article by supplying example of his own handwriting (lives life dangerously, successful and great company) as my fourth sample.

The problem with the printer, he reiterated, stemmed, like all the other problems I have had with my computer since Christmas, from the lakes and mountains screensaver.

"Whoever gave you that," he said, "obviously didn't like you very much. Do you have some great character defect which is not immediately apparent?"

I told him that the screensaver was a Christmas gift from my husband, who could probably run up a fairly long list of my character defects, given a few moments, though I wasn't sure if he would include anti-social arsonist among them ...