All mod cons and nothing but hi-tech nightmares

Grasping this nettle, I have wandered disconsolate into one vast shop after another, each a ghastly world beyond my comprehension, each responding with equal incomprehension to my enquiry; fax machines, it seems, have gone the way of gramophones, and woe betide me when my typewriter breaks down, for I shall never grasp the hang of a computer.

In 1974 a Czech professor gave the name Dyscalculia to a malfunction in the brain, the inability to grasp any form of mathematics. I have it in so acute a form that it affects my response to things technological as well. I can remember the order of only two numbers, not more, and cannot divide or multiply by any figure higher than five. I do not understand the electronics of my car, and my camera has lain discarded since 1986; I do not understand my electric oven when I need to use the grill; and now I do not understand the fax machine discovered in an Argos catalogue.

No simple single-function variant is now available - it must be telephone, answering machine and photocopier as well; in red and green it flashes warnings and instructions, instead of a ringing tone it emits a fearsome boingboing noise, and for a message to be retrieved or junked I must press three buttons in a quite particular order.

Unlike my old answering machine it does not record a caller's number - a tiresome loss, for most who leave one gabble at breakneck speed. A dozen ridiculous functions are indicated with symbols of hieroglyphic obscurity for users with acute myopia, and the book of instructions runs to 52 closeprinted pages of what I presume to be computer-speak (certainly not English).

Why should a fax machine offer Power Cycling (impossible for a man of my age and condition), why Fun and Games, why a Sudoku for Every Day? Why should it pretend to be an alarm clock, remind me that it is my birthday and spy on spare-bedroom happenings when guests are in the house? Nothing of this is any use to me - my need was no more than the convenience of sending a fax to the office once a week, not the electronic equivalent of a nagging wife and a source of material for a pornographic novel.

My (un)kindly neighbour, much amused, has changed the boingboing ring-tone to a vile rendering of Wagner's Valkyries.