Humor: Reluctant greenfingers can't warm to worms

Reluctant greenfingers
can't warm to worms

As a person who hates all things to do with gardening, I was horrified to find out a worm had got into my computer.

"Not a garden worm, you pillock," my friend Orville told me. "A computer virus worm."

I have no idea what a pillock is but it did come as a comfort to me to discover that a pink squirmy beasty was not loose in the inner workings of my computer.

What next?
Snails in the C drive? Affids in the A drive?
I can think of nothing worse than having to don garden gloves to go online. Except, of course, donning garden gloves to go into the garden - which is something I had to do a bit of while my computer was out of action due to the virus.

"It took longer for them to fix your computer than to send men to the moon in 1969," Orville scoffed.

"That's not true," I said. "It only took two weeks for them to clean out the worm. The other two weeks was to put the computer roughly back to how it was."

Of course, it did come back from the shop minus all my programs but, hey, what else are weekends for but to sit in front of the computer and reload them all?

"Gardening," said Orville.

"Hey, don't joke around," I said, putting my hand to my mouth in a shooshing motion. "I don't want to give my wife any ideas."

Of course, maybe that is what the young writers of computer viruses want.

I say young because I cannot imagine older people with purpose in their lives getting a thrill out of disabling computers and sending conscientious objectors like me out into the garden.

Hardly a week goes by that there is not news of a new computer virus sweeping the world's computers.

They can even steal your identity now and send out virus attachments using what appears to be your own email address.

I have lost count of the "return" emails I have had from other computers saying that I had sent them a suspected virus.

A workmate received an email the other day with an attachment carrying a virus - from, get this, himself, which was a bit of a giveaway that it was bogus.

I cannot help thinking that if the fathers of these virus writers had worn protection in the first place, we would not have to have so much protection for our computers.

Who are these people?

My hunch is that they are the same brand of vandals who spread graffiti over public and private property.

I have a plan to flush them out though.

As soon as I can make the garden hose stretch into the study, I plan to give my computer a darn good soaking in the hope that all the computer worms come to the surface.

That will kill two birds with one stone. The gardening and computer gods will be soooooooo proud of me.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it