Illona Hepburn stood in the open doorway waiting for the perfunctory peck on the cheek as her husband raced straight past her on his way home from work.   More concerned with reaching his games room to play his latest computer games, than in spending his evenings with her.

“Hi, hon,” said Greg Hepburn by way of greeting.   As expected, he pecked her right cheek, then raced past her toward the stairs to his upstairs “study”.

Staring after him, as he raced down the corridor, Illona sighed and noticed that he was running to fat.   When they had married ten years ago, Greg had been a little over-weight.   But since becoming addicted to computer games, he had started to spend all his time sitting at a computer playing (what to Illona seemed to be) childish computer games.

*      *      *

Racing into his games room, Greg sat down at his personal computer, then groaned at the pang in his back caused by the spine-destroying “ergonomic” chair.

Standing up again, he turned the chair over onto its side and thump-thump-thumped the “adjustable” backrest in and tightened the large plastic knob as best he could.   Then he turned the chair back onto its coasters and sat on it again.

With a screeching of metal the knob gave way instantly and the backrest slid out again, causing Greg to almost fall over backwards.

Cursing, he pushed the chair away and walked across to where an orange kitchen chair sat near his music deck.   He lifted the chair and carried it back to the personal computer.

“Why can’t makers of so-called ergonomic chairs realise the most important factor is the backrest?” muttered Greg to no one in particular.   “It should push hard into your back, not fly away from you at the first feather contact with your back.”

Lifting up a black leather carryall, he unzipped it and took out stationary — pens, staples, envelopes and a red stamp pad — that he had “borrowed” on “ninety-nine-year loan” from his work.

Last of all, he lifted out what looked like two CD cases.

Greg pressed the power button on his personal computer and the on button on the monitor and cursed as the computer seemed to take forever to install the temporary RAM copy to work on.