Computers are the most alarming creatures. Two weeks ago my fingers were flying across the keyboard keeping pace with my composition when all of a sudden the whole screen flipped through ninety degrees bringing proceedings to an astonished halt. I had never seen the like before. The Help Menu was of no assistance. Knowing what to ask is the key…and you never do. And it had to happen on a Friday evening in summer...so the Microsoft Helpline was no help until eight o’clock on Monday morning when it opened for business. I even made a concerted assault on one of the many Microsoft Chat Groups…a technical one…but to no avail. No one had encountered my problem before.

But I am not one to be defeated by a large dumb beast. So I turned my head sideways and finished what I was doing and then did something else with the monitor turned on its side. Perhaps that would shake the icons loose…or cause them all to fall to the bottom of the screen. Finally I gave up the struggle and took myself off to bed…perplexed.

But I do not give up easily. On Saturday morning I woke up at five o’clock determined to solve the mystery. Whatever else you may think of computers they have one very big thing going for them. Big dumb beasts they may be but they are big dumb logical beasts. Screens do not suddenly flip themselves sideways…contents and all…without a reason…or…forbid the thought…viruses…the very last thing I wished to contemplate.

I had been moving at high speed. I would retrace my fingersteps slowly and deliberately. Perhaps by a process of elimination…now let me assume that my flying fingers had brushed the Control key...something that has happened to me in the past with curious results. After trying every combination of Control+ another key…and discovering some interesting combinations…the screen remained resolutely sideways. I thought fondly of all the computer whiz-kids I know in Sussex. Perhaps I should email them about my woes…they would be opening for business in six hours time. Sweden is one hour ahead of England and it was not yet six. But first one last go at cracking it. How about Control+Alt+F1…or F2…or F3…?

I felt like a safe breaker…which was not far from the truth. Suddenly the beast confounded me again. Now everything was upside down. My son would never believe this and would accuse me of having done all manner of foolish things with his computer. Then that Light Bulb Moment. I had reached ‘R’ when the screen flipped. Just maybe in windowspeak R stands for rotate. I pressed Control+Alt+R again. Eureka! The screen flipped itself round another ninety degrees. Now I was bending my neck the other way…progress of sorts. But I knew I had it sussed. Computers are the most alarming creatures…but they are logical alarming creatures. One more Control+Alt+R did the trick and I was finally back where I started. I breathed a big sigh of relief as a wave of smugness washed over me.

Young…hmm…William was a very happy bunny. He took himself off to breakfast in full Hubris mode before reading the newspaper to keep Nemesis at bay…one of the salutary effects they have. However awful your situation out there things are much worse. And so it was…a normal day in Baghdad with another fifty killed…chaos in Beirut as the Swedish Foreign Office evacuates its citizens and leave the Lebanese behind to be massacred by Israeli forces massing on the border…the world continues to ignore the genocide in Darfur…a tsunami kills hundreds in Indonesia.

The next time I met up with Alan I suggested we try Cntrl+Alt+R on his AppleMac laptop. He was hesitant but eventually got into the swing of it...there is an excellent Macshop round the corner in Sundbybergscentrum if all else fails. Not a flicker of interest from the G4 Powerbook. So it is a Bill Gates…or Nicholas John…Friday Night Special. But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself…just for fun. But no law suits please when you wake up with a crick in your neck after spending the day with your head on its side and the screen refusing to return to the upright position.

In the spring of 1982 when Rachel Kowalczyk changed my life I was working on three Anti-Nuclear Projects. I often wonder whether the FBI has this fact on file. Just in case they do let me correct the record…the evidence of the STASI Files left by the Yanks after the Fall of the Berlin Wall suggests they may need it. But goodness knows what use they make of these records…helps them to place my name on a list so they can turn me away when I show up at New York’s Kennedy Airport? ‘Hi. I’m William Shepherd…real name John Doe…may I come into your beautiful country please?’ ‘No! Have a nice day!’ Next time I will fly into Montreal and cycle into North Dakota from Manitoba.

In 1982 elections were being contested for the Cambridge City Council and David Wiley was standing for re-election on an anti-nuclear platform that included shutting down MIT’s Draper Labs and declaring a Nuclear-Free Zone. I was also busy lobbying for Helen Caldicott...the Australian doctor who had founded Physicians for Social Responsibility...to be awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize. I gave Jacob von Uexkull a private showing of Eight Minutes to Midnight at the Second Fourth World Assembly in Berlin later that year. The third project was with David Halprin…a devotee of the DoJo on Massachusetts Avenue where he practised Aikido…and one of two Harvard Law School graduates I became good friends with in Cambridge…Joe Schmidt from Seattle was the other. David’s day job was as a Massachusetts State Deputy District Attorney. But more about this third project another day.