As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted

What happened was, my laptop stopped working. It'd been playing up for some time, but then it took things to a new level, and the keyboard stopped working properly. I tried all the things I could think of - deleting and reinstalling the drivers, shouting at it, hitting it, you know the kind of thing, but that only seemed to make it worse, and it wouldn't even turn on. At this point I decided that since it's Christmas, and Christmas is about buying oneself expensive presents, I would get myself a new laptop. So I did, in the fun of late-night shopping in Derby. However, the new laptop turned out not to work properly either, so then I had to take it back the next night for a replacement. However, NOW, I'm finally back on the internet and ready to think about perhaps buying things for other people.

Incidentally, I've still got my reliable old desktop, getting on for its tenth birthday, but it hasn't got the right kind of socket for my internet cable. Somewhere I've got a dongly thing for converting the modern-style cable into a USB connection, but I'm damned if I know where it is since I moved. I'm sure it'll turn up some day, possibly in a museum.

Anyway, now I'm at liberty to gripe about modern times to an uninterested audience, while I was shopping I heard (in what is admittedly a refreshing change from the usual Christmas songs, much as I love them) the cover of "Run" by someone who was on Pop Idol or something, which I'd heard about before but never heard sung. I hadn't actually realised it was that song - I quite like it, and when I heard someone say "Run", I thought to myself 'oh yeah, I think I like that one, what does it go like?', but it's only now that I've put the thoughts together and formed bigoted opinions.

Really, that is so very not a song for the likes of this Pop Idol woman, whoever she is (I forget the name. Possibly Leona Lewis). That's a real song, it's the kind of song you don't sing unless you've written it yourself and belong to a moody, scruffy band who play guitar quite badly but write good enough songs that it doesn't matter and who have a cult following. Pop Idol women (come to think of it, Leona Lewis, who may or may not be the singer I'm complaining about, might have been off The X-Factor. I only know her name because I remember one of those music channels being rude about her attempts to pass herself off as a real singer) should do covers of chirpy seventies songs that everybody's forgotten, not of recent cool songs that real people like. It's an outrage, I tells ya. Actually, the cover isn't all that bad - the woman's not a very good singer, but it's a good enough song that any version of it is listenable-to. But it's the principle of the thing.