The Definition of Panic

The definition of panic, dear friends, is when your stupid Windows Media Player (let the guilty be named) tells you that all of your music is on your computer twice, and then you remember that you put stuff in a 'public' folder, because your stupid computer thinks that your part-time worker self and your fooling around freelance self are two different people altogether (which they kind of are, I like to think, but I digress..).




The definition of panic, is when you do actually check, and Windows Explorer shows you a happy little list of folders in BOTH your 'music' folder and your 'public music' folder, clear indication in anyone's language that there are files in both. Deluded, I was. Deceived and deluded. So, in order to keep your little laptop the lean mean fighting machine that it needs to be in this dog-eat-homework world, you press 'delete' to erase the material in your 'public' folder, ignoring the little voice in the back of your head that is querulously murmering 'Hang on. No way is your hard disk big enough to fit all your music twice.'





The definition of panic is when the warning that the thing is about to delete 8,136 items makes no impression on you whatsoever except to make you feel rather smug and self-congratulatory about the fact you have accrued 8,136 items of rather eclectic and diverse musical joy. This vainglorious buzz lasts just long enough to quash any uneasiness prompted by your computer telling you that it will not put these things in that safe little Half-way House for Wayward Files, the Recycle Bin. It will instead delete them - completely and irrevocably - without further ado. This is precisely because it is a rich and lovely collection of such impressive volume. This is because you are now homeless and all your CDs are stored away in an asbestos-soaked shed in the middle of Brunswick, and your only access to your music, lovingly collected over years, is via your computer. Yes, it seems size does matter.


The definition of panic is when you check back in your music folder to find everything gone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Everything, that is, except one empty Beck folder. Oddly, the Microsoft gods decided to let that stay, as a hollow reminder of all that had been and was now no more.


But wait. No need to send flowers.



The definition of relief is when you realise that you acually backed up your computer before you left the UK, because you remembered that if your laptop got nuked by some feral device bent on protecting the world from Terror you are fucked, both professionally and personally. Professionally for obvious reasons. Personally because all your photos and music, and therefore the best parts of oneself, would be erased forever.



So, as I write, a shiny little back box about the size of a Moleskine notebook with a reassuringly steady blue light on the side is painstakingly giving my machine back its soul - or at least 6,812 parts of it. This is going to take it 59 minutes apparently, which seems a little unfair given that the accumulated musical wisdom of 41 years of listening pleasure took me a maximum of two clicks and well under 59 seconds to destroy. I am a little concerned about the mysterious attrition of about 1,200 items but, hell, seven eighths of a soul is better than no soul at all.


Back up, my friends, back up. Disaster is but a mouse-click away.