Chaos theory

In the space of two weeks, I have gone from being the most organised person I know to the ditziest woman in London.

Organised Me lived a life full of certainties. Every weekday morning, I would be at my desk by 8.30am, armed with a steaming mug of milky coffee and a clear hour in which to catch up with Blog World. All through the day, in between bouts of pretending to work, emails would pop into my inbox and I'd answer them in a flash. Lunches, dinners and drinks dates went into my (huge, unwieldy, resolutely 1980s-throwback) diary. I wrote shopping lists, checked train times, printed out maps if I wasn't sure where I was going for dinner. Oh yes, I was Little Miss Efficiency personified.

All this has completely fallen apart now that I no longer spend my days tethered to a computer terminal. Emails languish for days, unseen, in my hotmail account (which I can't even upgrade to use with the dreaded Outlook - let alone Thunderbird - because the version of MS Office on this bloody computer is so antiquated). My printer is too temperamental to provide me with a regular supply of maps (I know I could just carry an A-Z, but my bag is heavy enough as it is), so this week not only was I two hours late for a party in Stamford Brook, but I also - and this is quite special - contrived to take 45 minutes to get from Liverpool Street station to Rivington Street. A journey which, by foot, should have taken me about five minutes.

In an effort to restore order to my existence I bought a new (smaller, lighter but still a bit '80s) diary. It's aesthetically delightful, but too small to take all the useful bits of paper I used to carry around with me everywhere. So now I don't know where anything is.

I have been running around London all week, with deadlines to meet and appointments to make but with no structural framework to my days. I have been late for pretty much everything, have barely looked at a newspaper (with the exception of time spent playing spot-the-difference between the ghastly London Lite and the only marginally less vapid thelondonpaper), seen next to no TV and missed once-in-a-decade European football matches. All my meals have been from high street sandwich bars and the M&S chiller cabinet. In fact, my life at the moment bears a startling resemblance to itself, circa 1996 (apart from the not being in an office part).

I have thought long and hard about the major differences between then and now, and have been led to the inescapable conclusion that what's missing is the internet. So from now on there are going to be some changes around here: clearly, what I really need is some scheduled quality time with the laptop.