You know the feeling - your computer announces that it is going to do some updates, and that this might take some time.  And of course when your computer is more than nine years old, it really does take a very long time.  But never mind, next day you switch it on and... oh, your email programme is sending error messages... so you do everything that the internet suggests (which takes a few hours) and still it doesn't work.

Never mind, you think, I already have a newer email programme installed, I'll simply open that up instead.  And lo, it works... but, oh, you have no contacts...

Yes, gentle reader, the update broke my email software and cleared all my contacts.

But all was not lost!  In my webmail, my iphone and the private email account on my laptop, I had most of them. So with a bit of faffing and more researching, I now have contacts again... but not yet all of them.

Ah well, I am sure there's a moral in there somewhere (and no, it's not switch to apple from miscrosoft!) but at least everything is now functional and I can add afresh contacts over the coming weeks/months.

Nine years and counting is pretty impressive for a computer - just need it to hang on in there for a couple of years yet!