My husband spilled wine on my laptop. My life was over!

Ellen's recent computer problems have helped put her online life in context (Image: Archant)

Last week my husband spilt wine all over my laptop.

It was a dreadful moment. One of those that seemed to happen in slow motion. The drink on the table next to my work station, the nudge of a careless hand, the glass tipping and us both going to grab it simultaneously, missing, watching with open-mouthed horror as it splashed across the keyboard, leaving behind a fizzing popping sound that could mean only one thing.

I sat in horrified silence as he desperately tried to mop the screen. Then I put my head in my hands thinking of all the work I might never recover. My writing, I thought. My photos, music, random thoughts that could have one day been made into a complex, best-selling narrative.

Finally I took to Facebook (via my phone of course) to vent my fury in public at his carelessness.

“This is the worst thing that could ever happen to a journalist,” I lamented.

But of course it isn’t. Anyone following recent news events in Syria knows I am being exceedingly melodramatic.

And, in the grand scheme of things, losing your hard drive to Pinot Grigio is not such a terrible thing.

You see, while I need my computer to work, in my household virtual space aces physical all the time. And I am by far the worst offender.

Rarely can any individual be found in our home without earphones stuffed in the side of their head and their digits dancing over a touchscreen.

My husband is forever tapping away at his Blackberry. He has been known to text me from another room to ask what’s for supper. My son, who has TV time limited to an hour a day, can often be found catching up on Power Rangers re-runs on YouTube. As for my daughter, she has replaced her parents with the Sims.

And me? I adore my digital devices. This might be looked on by some as a tragic admission. Not ballet, opera, theatre, literature or global politics, Ellen? Surely even sport would be less dismally unsociable.

Ah but of course I love the arts, I am fascinated by politics and I love to read. It’s just that these days I can do it all online.

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check my emails. I am an avid user of social networking sites, making and building friendships in the ether, playing Scrabble with virtual strangers and sharing my thoughts on an hourly basis on Twitter. I can’t watch a television programme without tweeting about it, pinging off messages about irrelevant subject matters to the big, wide world. I even take my computer to bed to surf the net while my other half snoozes in the flickering light of pixels.

Yes primarily, I use my gadgets for work. It makes life a lot easier – for research purposes but also as a way to store information.

I was a journalist long before the rise of social networking you see. I remember a time when we had to use a cuttings library to find out snippets of background on people and events. When all newspapers were carefully preserved on microfiche. I would walk the streets looking for stories, speak to people, make friends, avoid enemies, attend events, listen, make notes.

Not any more.

I have gone down with the ship into the electronic whirlpool.

And the worst of it is that, as I have come to rely more and more on technology, I can’t quite fathom how I used to manage without it.

The web has made the world more interesting, immediate, intelligent, interactive.

It has given us access to all sorts of information at the simple click of a button.

Job advertisements, property prices, book reviews, news bulletins, weather reports, health scares, exams results, encyclopedias, dictionaries, the complete works of Shakespeare.

We will know instantly when the result of the Scottish referendum comes through this week. We can follow events in war-torn countries without setting foot outside the safety of our own front door. We know more about people whose lives were once shrouded in secrecy. Take The Duchess of Cambridge for example. Every wave of gut-wrenching nausea she experiences through pregnancy number two, we are going to be privy to.

We no longer need journalists to inform us in the way they used to either. Now they are just there to clarify, fill in the gaps. Because people on the street with their camera phones and 140-character sound bites are the ones breaking the news.

So returning to the calamity of my computer breakdown.

You want to know what I did about it. Why I am able to sit here typing this column?

Well, after towels, hairdryers and flipping the machine over to extricate the last drops of wine, I rushed out to buy a bag of rice in which to submerge it – apparently this absorbs any remaining liquid.

But later, as I rang every number in my phone book to see if a friend had a spare laptop, I felt like a woman gone mad.

It’s only a machine. It’s not the end of the world.

In the end I decided to take it to be fixed by a professional and borrow a basic model without all the bells and whistles.

So what has my electronic apocalypse taught me about my reliance on technology?

It’s worrying perhaps.

After all, somewhere between the introduction of the DVD and the latest phone I have been swept into a world from which I find it very difficult to extricate myself.

But truth be told, it did me good to reconnect with what is important in life.

Without my computer, I went out more, I spent more time in the garden breathing in the fresh air, I visited friends rather than emailed them, I got my kids painting rather than using a computer doodle tool, I wrote – with a pen. I had a proper conversation.

I can’t pretend I won’t be happy to reconnect to my online existence but I do think losing it – albeit temporarily – has taught me that the “social” element to social networking is entirely bogus.

The sad reality is that we have become enslaved by the technology designed to free us and it’s time I looked at what I hold most dear.

Yes, a virtual life is easier than real life. But, let’s face it, really it is no life at all.

• Ironically perhaps, you can find me on Twitter @EllenWiddup.

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