Where I was shovelling coal into the back of my computer

I'm back from my travels and pleased to report that the trip to Manchester to see my Stepdaughter went very well.  The only snag was that as Ria and Ella were with me we were yakking away for three hours, so when Sat Nav kept bleeping to warn me of the speed cameras I don't know whether I was paying attention and if I slowed down in time.

When I got back last night, I had this horrendous thought.  What if I got not one, but lots of speed camera tickets?  How many can you get at one time? Is it in Guinness book of records? Can you go to jail if you get more than say ten on one day?   I must have been praying on my mind because I went to bed and had an awful nightmare. All the tickets were delivered at once by Postman Fred, assisted by three of his postman friends and they arrived in a big van, the way they bring the mail at Christmas. Tickets were shooting through the letterbox like coins after a slot machine jackpot in Las Vegas. I needed a shovel to get to the front door and the judge sentenced me to 62 points on my license and £1,000,000 in fines (which I may only have to pay back at £3 per week, because I'm on Job Seekers Allowance). 

When I woke up, I fully expected to be shackled in a prison cell. The The Husband didn't help matters by singing "the sun has got his hat off" and then saying in his cheerful morning voice, "here's your tea and toast, come on, chop chop, it's a lovely morning and you need to get on line and look for our  new dream house. Then  we can ring the agents and go and view some more today."

"At seven o'clock on a Saturday morning?" Grrrrr. 

"I need a new computer,"  I said to The Husband half an hour later, as I was shovelling more coal into the back, trying to get up a good head of steam to search the estate agents sites.
"What makes you think that?  It looks perfectly fine to me."
(No, it doesn't dear reader, it's ancient and has what they now refer to euphemistically as 'retro styling.' It looks one of those those Philips tellies your granny bought with ration stamps or swapped for two tins of corned beef and a bag of sugar.)
"It has a walnut case for goodness sakes," I told him, "my aunty Gladys thought it was a cocktail cabinet."
"You're just cross because you had to get up early."
"Plus it keeps crashing," I said ignoring him and pressing the Bakelite buttons  "and it's got what the computer man calls The B-SOD."
"B-SOD?"
"It's a technical term, means "The Blue Screen Of Death," it comes up whenever I switch computer on."
"Oh," he said, "is that bad?"
"The clue is in the name," I said testily looking into the blue glare.
After about an hour, when  it had finally booted up and I had trawled through the usual websites without success I had a brilliant idea. "What about going to look at old ruins that need renovation, you know barns for developing, farmhouses that need doing up? It always looks good on the TV."
"Property developing are you mad? he said,  "when I put up three shelves in the kitchen we nearly got divorced."