A Dummy's Guide to Computer Cleaning

Today was a reasonable today and was only spoiled when a colleague advocated removing the keys from my computer keyboard to aid its cleaning.

Clearly she wasn't suggesting that all the keys be removed in one go - as we both decided that other than the QWERTY keys, we might not be able to replace all of the keys in the right order (unless we copied another keyboard of course).

I only took one key off - the space-bar - only to be confronted by 4 years' of "debris" - dust, food, grime and various human "matter" - eyelashes, nails, hair - (who knows from where!) congealed in every nook and cranny.

It is fair to say that if Annie & Aggie ever host a programme called "How clean is your keyboard?" mine would be a candidate for the environmental computer scrapheap. After deciding that I couldn't face removing any more keys, I put the space-bar back.

Needless to say, it failed to work properly thereafter - either not depressing at all (in fact I was the only one that was depressed) or sticking down when pressed, producing line after line of spaces.

If anyone is ever tempted to try this, let me give you one piece of advice... DON'T DO IT!