Yesterday a piano broke an axe. Today a bed broke a hammer and a chair broke my head.

I'm tired and most of me aches. If this is real life, you can keep it.

I've spent the last few days carrying furniture up and and down stairs, humping around remarkably heavy bags of old books and vinyl records, and breaking stuff up to put in a skip.

Today I tried to break up an old piano long past repair. But it broke the axe. The trouble with things built to last is...they do.

My brother's getting married. I'm just not sure why.

Neither he nor his longtime girlfriend are especially romantic or conventional, there's no famillial pressure, zero plans to have children, no financial incentive, and even if they were surrounded by people urging them to do it, they're far too sensible and independent to do it for that reason.

Still, she's a good women - highly intelligent and cheerfully cynical with a fondness for fluffy dogs and absurdly hot curries. If she were my boyfriend, I think I'd marry her.

Senile

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Old people are not stupid.

They don't enjoy being patronised, can learn new things, have initiative, aren't full of idiotic prejudices, aren't obsessed with mindless gossip and aren't a complete and utter waste of space.

Charities can we well-run, useful and free from pointless bureaucracy.

Education is about helping students educate themselves, not faking exam results.

After today, I just need to remind myself of these things.

You see, two years ago the government took a very dim view of unemployed people doing voluntary work - they saw it as a way for them to avoid doing "real" work, and they'd fine you if you did it. Yes, it is stupid.

Now though, they'll try to force you into doing voluntary work, seeing as there's few paid jobs around and so much socially necessary work is now done by charities. So they're trying to get me to do some - not much at the moment, just a few regular hours.

So today I dutifully arranged and attended an interview at a charity that offers IT courses to the elderly. I'm a teacher, I know computers, and those of my friends who aren't under thirty are over fifty, so it made sense.

Now, I've worked for some vague people in my time, but these folk take the proverbial biscuit.

I ask: Who are my colleagues? Comes the answer: It depends who turns up.

Will I be working one-to-one or teaching a class? It depends who turns up, how they feel, and how you feel.

How long does a class last and when does it start? Whenever a "client" is there.

What do the other IT teachers teach? They don't know much more about computers than the "clients". But they do like Windows Vista.

What exactly would I be teaching? Whatever you feel like - provided you teach it a dozen times in a row for those with memory problems.

All pretty free-and-easy, right? Not quite. There is a series of exams, which I absolutely must administer and collect statistics on - in order for the charity to continue to receive government funding. So there is a core of issue I must teach and test, even if I do nothing else.

Here are some of the things I'd have to teach. See if you can spot what they all have in common.

* A Trojan is a program which tries to fool you into installing a virus.
* People called "Criminal Hackers" try to put spyware on your computer, using programs called Botnets.
* Installing the latest updates to your programs keeps your system secure.
* If you use social networking sites, you should not put any information on them, for your security.
* Something called the Virtual Global Taskforce will prosecute on your behalf if you're ripped off online.

So what do all these statements have in common? Yes, that's right - they're all complete bollocks.

Virtual Global Taskforce? I've asked around, and no one's heard of it. Keep your Facebook page empty? That kind of defeats the purpose. Botnets? Possibly they're referring to net bots, but these can't install software at a distance.

All these "facts" are taught by the most patronising, simperingly grating educational multimedia package I've ever come across. Oh, and it took me half an hour to figure out how to navigate it - with the help of two established volunteer teachers who kept saying it was different the last time they used it.

So it would obviously be really easy to use if you've got the early stages of Alzheimer's and have never used a computer before.

I've also got the phone number of a museum that wants tour guides. A job which also involves telling the same lies over and over again.

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Which is more disgusting? Eating mayonaise from the pot, or curry paste from the jar?

What can I say? I'm peckish, it's 0400, there's nothing else in the room, I like curry, and it's probably better for my diet than mayonaise.

There's a house on the street up for sale. The front garden is piled high with rusty kitchen equipment, bits of furniture, irregularly sized planks of wood and other...stuff.

Someone's presumably tried to carry away a tasteless bright blue carpet, abandoning it in the gutter on realising how much carpets weigh. I expect to see the pile get smaller over the next week - till there's just the kettle on the cooker left.

I've got the threadbare maroon office chair. One of the castors is missing and you can't adjust the height, but it swivels wonderfully. At last, I don't have to blog sitting on grandma's old piano stool.

This morning, Mother and I worked out that we have fifteen working computers in the house - plus three nonworking ones.

Most are obsolete PCs of around 1GHz, assigned to single tasks - one records DAB radio, one scans documents, one records TV shows, one's an ebook reader, and one makes periodic backups of all the others. There's one used for trying out new ideas for the others, and one that's for storing and sifting data backed up before there was one dedicated to backing up.

Now we've got sixteen. My friend, comrade and fellow nerd Peekok (who does have a non-nick-name, but no one uses it and I can't pronounce it) has given me his old PC, on the grounds that (a) it hasn't been used for a year and (b) there's no room for it.

And yes, I can think of a use for it.

C has once again decided that I'm a vindictive, hate-filled manipulator who can't cope with him being happy, and he's never ever going to communicate with me again. He's communicated this to me four times so far in as many hours.

Apparently I'm evil for not trying to win him back after he said all that.

And the moral of the story is: Don't lend your computer equipment to drama queens - they might go postal and not give it back.