They say you can learn a lot about yourself in a crisis. It is at times like this that the false bravado and fake exterior we routinely put on show are stripped away to leave the real you exposed for all the world to see.

I am not afraid to say, that as the coffee lurched its way directly towards my lovely new Macbook the real me sqealed a bit like a little girl on a particularly scary ghost train ride, who has inadvertently sat next to Gary Glitter.

In cases of liquid spillage, the first few seconds are vital (I have subsequently read on the Internet). The very helpful Wikihow website gave me some excellent advice. Albeit about 24 hours too late.

1. Turn the machine off immediately. Remove power cable and the battery.

I ran around my flat shouting, “Kitchen roll! Kitchen roll! Where the fuck is the fucking kitchen roll!?!”

2. Turn it upside down to prevent the liquid seeping any further into the machine.

I gave up on the kitchen roll and went upstairs to get a new toilet roll from the airing cupboard.

3. Clean up any part of the spill you can see.

After a couple of minutes cursing the extensive layers of impenetrable wrapping retailers put around the toilet rolls these days, I was finally doing the right thing, though there wasn’t much to wipe up any more.

4. Disconnect and remove any and all external devices.

I breathed a sigh of relief as the machine appeared to be still alive (having completely ignored points 1, 2 and 4). The one fairly significant problem was the watermark that appeared to be running down the screen, on the inside (see here for a picture of it).

I decided to Google ‘replacement screens for a macbook’, and as the prices in both dollars and pounds appeared before me, I became more and more nauseous with each site I visited.

I am now learning to live with a watermark.

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