"What have you done?" I say with a resigned impatientness of someone who's going to be asked to do something they don't want to.

"Nothing. I turned my computer on and the network didn't work so I deleted..." my Dad replied with Luddite mischievousness.

He carries on detailing all the things he has done which equate to "nothing". His company network is very much more complicated than it needs to be as it is only connecting two computers together. But he insists on throwing technical challenges my way by fiddling and introducing "easy to use" software like Norton Internet Security.

But I am his (unwaged) Director of IT - or at least that's what it says on my Makro card - so I shouldn't complain. One of the downsides of working in IT is that friends, family, neighbours and strangers in the street feel that they can ask you anything about computers and you don't mind giving up your spare time for a Busman's Holiday. (I do not mean the short lived ITV quiz show of the same name as that would be fun as it involved state of the art graphics.)

To further emphasise my point - if I was a gynecologist, would you ask me to:

"pop round and have a quick look at the wife's snatch as a favour for a mate. It was working fine the other day but I was messing around with it last night and it just doesn't seem to work anymore"?

Resigned to missing Australia vs Croatia I potter round and see if I can solve the latest Rubick's Cube of a computer problem he has set me. I disconnect this from that and run one thing and another and change a box from ticked to unticked and before you know it it's working.

Like a kid at Christmas, I can see his hands twitching waiting to get back to messing with his computer. I temporarily consider restricting the access he has on his own PC but before I can...

"Son, I've broken it again..."