I'd never entered an online auction. Not seriously.

When I found a ticket for the Paul Weller concert in December I knew that had to change. 

I suppose that there are two types of people in an auction - those that will buy anything if it's a good price, and those that will pay a bit over the odds for rarities. I was in the second category. 

Proxy bidding - makes it all so easy really. None the less, when the end of the auction came, my heart was going like a trip hammer. There hadn't been many bids until the last couple of minutes when the price started going up. Made it though:

I don't like computer games. 

Not as a rule. 

I tried very hard to like The Sims, but I didn't really get into the game. The weird thing is that I completely understand why people enthuse about it ... it just doesn't do it for me. I often load the free games that come on the CD freebie on the cover of PC Pro . More than once I've killed the program before it's even fired up. 

When Doom appeared I could appreciate the technology that was behind it and I could happily watch our LAN being brought down by a networked game .... but that was it. 

Until ... 

I was sorting through my "crap" cupboard - it contains such delights as final demands from the Inland Revenue, my beer mat collection, 86 thousand AOL discs and a boot disc from my Amstrad 8086 - when I came across an elderly version of Flight Simulator, provided free with, umm, something. The Gateway I think. 

Loaded it. 

I'm hooked. 

Bought the latest version (FS 2000), started working through the tutorials, and that's it. I can't keep away from it. Help !!