I took to the internet like a duck2plum sauce – at first I thought it was a bad idea and then I found out it was wonderful.

That is of course when the world wide web chooses to work.

At first I thought t'internet was just a medium for people to sell me more stuff that I couldn't afford and didn't need, or a way for deranged psychopaths to learn how to blow up the world, but after several years I have found that, used with caution, the internet really is a wonderful thing.

Without the services of my local library's news database, my university dissertation on fiction written after the 9/11 World Trade Centre bombings would have been severely lacking in source reference material and, as a full time worker who believes weekends should be for relaxing, the ability to do a huge supermarket shop from the comfort of my living room and have it delivered to my front door the next night, is the most wonderful thing ever.

But, and it ain't a small but, if you rely on the internet for your work, such as I do, when it goes haywire, you lose the ability to do anything at all and this is terribly frustrating.

So, today, I am sitting in front of my PC with a pile of work to research, write and post online, and all I keep getting back from my googling is – Oops, this link appears to be broken - and I'm about to throw the whole kit and caboodle out of my office window.

But, no. I shall breathe deeply, contemplate what I can do without using the web, and then go and be as constructive as possible without the ‘virtual' crutch that is Mozilla.

The internet – don't you just love it?

Image © believekevin via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence