"We were left shell-shocked.Somehow, we'd fixed a machine, for cash, without destroying it"

As a new year dawns, we wonder why flashing a BIOS remains so stressful, ask what Ridge it’s really running and stare at a £500 PSU that doesn't fit

- LEE GRANT

As we barrel into the second half of this decade, you find me in a reflective mood. Happy New Year, by the way. For reasons which will become relevant in a moment, I've delved into Inspiration Computers’ dusty archive and pulled out invoice #00001 dated 6 December 2003 addressed to a Mr H of Huddersfield. This invoice details a 128MB SDRAM module (£39.49) and a 40GB IDE hard drive (£54.99). What isn’t recorded is the sheer terror that this job generated for Alison and me.

We'd only opened the shop a day or so earlier and I recall we were still trying to work out how to set it up. The paint on the walls wasn’t yet fully dry, and we'd just had a discussion over whether we had the budget to buy a personalised rubber-stamp for cheques, to save our customers writing out our ridiculously long business name. As it happens, we didn’t buy the stamp as neither was convinced the business would last six months. I'll just mention, without elaboration, that our unwieldy business name is partly due to an eccentric aromatherapist who became frustrated by Alison’s inability to detect that a glass of water was evil. Genuinely. Buy me a soda and lime one night and I may explain more.

I remember Mr H’s truck pulling up and him bundling through the door with a Packard Bell desktop. “Do you fix computers?” was his reasonable question. Alison and I froze, fearing that the truthful answer of “we don’t yet know” wasn’t reassuring. Thankfully, Mr H was won over by our charm (or maybe it was the paint fumes), handed over his pride and joy and skedaddled up the road. As the young people say, “sh!t got real”.