John Watson: Honestly, it wasn't working

The verb "to intermit" isn't used much any more but years ago it had an honoured place in the English language. Meaning to suspend action for a time, it can be found in literature as diverse as Milton's Paradise Lost: "Casual discourse... which intermits Our dayes work" [sic] and Dr Johnson: " ... the exact time when your Courts intermit". Gone though it may be from general use, it has left a worthy survivor which goes from strength to strength as technology advances. That is the word "intermittent", a word that denotes the great curse of the modern age.

We've all been there, of course. "Dring, dring," goes the doorbell and there on the threshold is a very competent-looking man, or possibly woman, who has come to repair your computer.

"Thank goodness you've arrived," you say," the internet has been cutting out for weeks and I really need to get it sorted."

"Right," comes the reply, "just show me what the problem is." You switch on and the internet works perfectly.

"Yes? Well it seems all right to me." You protest that it was not all right yesterday or indeed the day before, speaking a bit too fast and appealing for support to your spouse, who is trying to slope quietly out of the room.

"Are you sure you had it switched on?" The expert is speaking more slowly now in case you have difficulty following a question of this complexity.

"Yes, yes, I am not an idiot." There is just a slight pause before the answer comes back to the effect that that no one was suggesting that and you can see the thought flash past. Perhaps you are one of those people sent home under care in the community programme because of health service economies, even though you are not entirely up to it.

"Well, I'll give it a good check over anyway," by now the voice has taken on the soothing tone of the social worker and you realise that the system is going to be given the engineering equivalent of a placebo.

"That all seems to be running fine. I didn't find anything wrong but I have emptied the trash box and removed some cookies. No new parts, so that will just be the callout fee." The fee seems a lot for 20 minutes' work but you did call out a highly-trained technician 15 kilometres into the countryside for a problem that seems to have righted itself.

Anyway, it will be worth it to get continual internet at last. It is with a feeling of relief that you turn on the computer and press "search". Up it comes "this site has closed your browser. Please restart your computer." It's the sort of thing you might expect if you were watching porn or looking at a terrorist site but surely not from the BBC cricket news. So you are back where you started. The trouble is that there is absolutely no point in calling the expert back because the computer will work perfectly as soon as he is in front of it. That is what is meant by an intermittent fault. A fault which only happens out of the repairman's sight.

Of course, none of this is new. Cars have had intermittent faults for years. "The trouble is that it usually jams if you try to put it into reverse. Funny, it seems all right now." So too have lighting systems. "It must be a loose wire somewhere at the back". Probably Achilles, when he complained to the armourer that his spear did not fly straight, was met with the reply "it seems all right to me, O hero," as the armourer threw it in an exactly straight line.

Of course, Achilles had the advantage that he could slaughter the armourer, which must have been satisfying, but you can bet that he had no sooner done so than the spear started to fly crooked all over again. Actually, the word "intermittent" also applies to natural phenomena. An intermittent pain is one that causes you agony except, of course, when you're at the doctors. Intermittent weather is a week when it rains only during cricket matches and for the village fete. Intermittent violence is violence that only occurs when there is no policeman nearby.

The trouble is that, by their very nature, intermittent problems are impossible to handle because they only exist when they are not being observed by someone competent to deal with them.

I am sure that the existentialists could build a theory on that but, for myself, I put it down to Eris, the Greek god of chaos, and that is why, next time the internet malfunctions, I will not call an expert in at all. I will dress in a white sheet, knit twigs into my hair and go out into the garden to set up a votary altar. Obviously, the ceremony will involve singing and dancing and, the nature of intermittence being what it is, I expect that it will be one of those rare occasions when both sets of neighbours happen to look over the garden wall at the same time.

John Watson is the editor of the UK weekly online magazine The Shaw Sheet - www.shawsheet.com - where he writes as Chin Chin.