I AM writing this column on my own computer. A machine which I have paid for and which sits on a table in a small bedroom that I now call my 'office'.

I am typing these words into the computer, and when I have finished I am going to mail them electronically to their destination at the Evening Press.

"So what?" the casual reader of this column, who knows as much about me as I know about vintage traction engines, will probably say.

But to regular followers, who know that I am so inept with regard to new technology that I make the founder of the Luddite movement look like Bill Gates, this news will come as a major shock.

It has taken me years to achieve what most people got around to ages ago, and in part I have this column to thank.

Having whined on and on about nightmarish trips to the likes of PC World, Office World and other huge, scary and confusing worlds where the staff speak in alien tongues, and expect you to do the same, I received a couple of letters steering me in the direction of small independent shops that "are usually able to build you a computer from scratch".

This threw me a bit, as I imagined a room like something out of the Elves & the Shoemaker, full of little men in leather aprons, beavering away with soldering irons, welding micro-chips to circuit boards.

But I need not have worried. Custom-made, I was told, simply meant fitting software (I'm very blas about using the lingo now) that suits a person's needs.

And mine were simple. Writing, e-mail and the internet (mainly for the children and possibly my husband if he can exercise enough willpower to avoid chatrooms full of 'lonely, blonde and waiting for you' women from Eastern Europe).

For some reason, the day the computer arrived, my stomach was filled with butterflies. "Why are you so frightened of it, it's not human," my husband said.

Call it illogical, but I did not dare go in 'its' room for two days, and crept by the door like a naughty child sneaking past the headmaster's office. Yet once I got started, it wasn't too bad - just like the one at work, in fact.

There have been a few teething problems, sorted out by a computer whiz-kid friend of my husband and - embarrassingly - my eight-year-old daughter. I've also had the internet provider (I really do know the lingo) changed, to a company with a helpline in Britain rather than India. Call me narrow-minded, but I really don't think anyone should have to cross continents to get a bit of back-up, even if it is over the phone.

Although I'm gaining in confidence, I will never be 100 per cent comfortable with my, or indeed any, computer, and always print everything out in case of disaster. I lost a third of this column for a reason I couldn't fathom.

And, from a large selection in the shops, the handbook I felt was most useful is (for some reason my husband found this funny) described as 'a practical guide for older home users', and is published by Age Concern. It may be basic and have a lot of pictures, but it suits me down to the ground.

Updated: 09:28 Tuesday, July 06, 2004