After my client Spore had left, the room began to thaw out. His reptilian presence could bring a chill to any environment, let alone my generally inhospitable office.

I flicked through the pages he had left, each headed with the worst logo in the world. Drawing out a Venus Velvet, I began making some preliminary sketches before I remembered I hadn't used a pencil in ten years. I could barely write my name.

I went to fire up the pc, and I use this term because until recently it involved rubbing two sticks together.

I missed the old machine. Many's the time I'd been lulled into a womb-like reverie by the whirring of its vast engine, only to be jolted back to reality by the brittle barking of one of my lowlife clients.

But imagine my horror this afternoon when I reached for the on switch of the new silent-gliding incarnation to find it absent - replaced only by this cryptic, hand-written note: "I have taken the kid. Signed FF."

It could only mean one thing. Unable to draw and without a computer, my life as a graphic designer just got a whole lot harder.