Problems with my 'rrrrrrrr's

I've had my laptop for nearly three years now and considering it was a cheap model, it has served me very well. It takes a lot of bashing, especially now I am having a year as a writer. It has occasional 'moments' when it threatens to play up and lose my entire stock of written material. When this happens I have a screaming tantrum, Andy says 'have you made separate copies of your work?' I say 'no, you know I'm a technophobe,' and he says, 'bring me one of your memory sticks,' and I say 'what's a memory stick?' and he says 'get a grip woman,' which I do, then get a memory stick and he saves everything for me on the stick which I then do my best to misplace. By now, my laptop has decided to behave itself and all is well until the next time.

Recently, I've noticed that the 'r' key has become less sensitive to my girly touch. When I ead back my wok, I ealise that sometimes it doesn't make full sense because often the lette 'r' is missing (except that last one of couse, because I made an exta special effot to give the key a good wallop). So now, when I type I have it in the back of my mind that I have to hit the 'r' key with extra pressure and this can interfere with my creative flow. I already have a collection of typing foibles to cope with; I can't cope with another. My current list includes mistyping the words 'teh', 'nad', 'becasue', and 'contarfiburilatitty' with alarming regularity, although I admit the last one doesn't cause me as many moments of editing grief as the others.

Not all writers have these problems. Beatrix Potter for example. She would never have got published if she'd submitted scripts printed from my laptop. Can you imagine? 'Teh Tale of Pete Abbit' and 'Teh Tale of Jeemy Fishe,' by Beatix Potte? She'd have been okay with Mrs Tiggywinkle and Jemima Puddleduck, I suppose. And Tom Kitten. But what if she'd had the genius to write about chickens? (Actually, why didn't she write about chickens? She wrote about pretty much every other animal that lives in the countryside). All her hens would be Ms instead of Mrs and then people would think she was some kind of strident Left-wing, crew cut, bovver booted feminist (heaven forbid!). Even the stories of our hens are at isk...I mean risk. Miggins is okay and Poo and Slocombe. But poor Pumphey... with the abundance of featherage on her derriere, she is the last one who should have to tolerate problems with her 'rrrrrr's'.