Help Lines. They are either at phone numbers that a month later, when the itemised bill comes in you try to think who you called for 2 minutes at a cost of £2.99. Then recall that most of that time was spent listening to a “nice lady” announcement telling you the call will be recorded for training purposes, what the website URL is and that they will endeavour to do their best to solve your problem if you have your 16 digit serial number ready. The one that came on a flimsy slip of paper, at the bottom of the box underneath all the polystyrene, plastic and cardboard.

Or, after following the tediously endless lists to select which button to press, listening to Vivaldi (what happened to the Commitments?) and a robotic voice saying that you are fifty-fifth in the queue “But your call is valuable to us”. As soon as the phone is answered the line goes dead. Suspiciously as if someone picked up the receiver and put it down immediately. Alternatively you do eventually get a real live person who sounds as though they are using a long length of string and a tin can at their end of the line. Besides, their regional English accent is almost indecipherable to your Radio-Four attuned ears. Before you know it, they have told you it’s not their department and you are back in the queue for the correct one. That game can go on all day if you let it, being bounced from one to another – Bulldog are adept at it – until you eventually end up back with the original person you first spoke to who decides they can help you after all. When I deal with firms like this I try to call at 8.30am on a Sunday morning to get the best helpline operators who know it all, tell you useful snippets of extra information as well as discussing whether Schumacher is a flawed hero or not.

Worse is when QuarkXPress 7 quits, for no apparent reason (nothing unusual there then). It doesn’t save a “rescue file” and corrupts the latest version of your incredibly important document. XPress does pop up an automatic crash-log with an invitation to tell Quark Inc. what you were doing when it crashed and a button to click on the send the log to wherever. With an invitation like that of course you fill in their dialogue boxes telling them exactly what a miserable piece of drivel their application is that you got conned the best part of a grand for. It crashed all on its own while you were sipping coffee and idly gazing out the window watching the squirrels rogering on your garden wall. Click! It’s gone.

Five minutes later a telephone call comes in, a polite, educated voice with a slight accent (Birmingham? Manchester? Mombay?) tells you he has your recent crash report and it would make him the happiest person in the world if you will let him help you solve the problem. After a few minutes he reaches the bottom of the matter and yes it is their fault for making such a stupid programming error. They would like to make up the two decades of previous programming perversity and in the process reward your esteemed personage for the many hundreds of hours of your life they have wasted.

Or did I dream that last part?