After a relationship ends, those of us lucky to be surrounded by a network of loving friends and family will receive all sorts of supportive and encouraging messages to help us move on, but few of them have proved as comforting as one automatically generated for me by Microsoft this morning.
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I powered up the office in the rainy gloom of autumn's first big southerly, I got a friendly little on-screen missive informing me that my computer had just recovered from a serious error.
I could relate.
After a failed three-year relationship and an ill-advised two-month fling, I had spent the previous day dealing not only with a major crash of my hard drive, but of my own internal combustion systems as well.
There's nothing quite like seeing a day's hard work crash and burn to make your own life feel a little like it is facing the blue screen of death.
But a stiff gin, switching things off at the wall and leaving everything to settle overnight seems to solve most problems in life and this morning I came back into work with a renewed vigour and a sense of real affinity with what my computer had been through.
I learned from my computer this morning that while there is always the option of hitting the "click here for more information about this fault" button, it really is better to just click on "OK" and move on without analysing the technical specifications of the crash.
But that doesn't mean adjustments aren't required.
When you've spent most of your adult life living with other people, rattling around in a family-sized home on your own is an acquired skill.
Putting TVs on timers to avoid the deafening silence as you walk through the front door after a late night at work seems a little too extreme, but talking out loud to the dog longer than might otherwise be cool is proving an effective alternative.
Ultimately though, like most things in life it is the practical dilemmas that become most vexing and food and what to do with it is what I'm struggling with the most. When you are single, is there any point preparing a meal at all, and if one does, how do you do it so that you don't keep inadvertently making enough for two?
The solution for me seems to sit somewhere between not eating anything at all for several days and then making up for this by eating giant portions for several more.
And of course there are always the up sides - being suddenly single in my early 30s when it seems everyone I know is bogged down with dirty nappies and 6am starts feels rather delightful on dozy Sunday mornings with tea, toast and the weekend papers spread across the bed.
The childhood fairytales about Prince Charming never seem to include faithless ex-wives and colicky babies.
Although it is a reality check to realise that this Cinderella dropped her slipper and no one has come along to collect it, it is a growing thrill to realise there is an alternative happy ever after, and it's one I get to write myself.
And because it seems that in real life princes turn into frogs rather than the other way around, this final chapter might just skip the whole love scene all together and instead close with the foxy princess skipping happily into the sunset with a sassy smile and a one-fingered salute to fairytales, frogs and convention.
After a relationship ends, those of us lucky to be surrounded by a network of loving friends and family will receive all sorts of supportive and encouraging messages to help us move on, but few of them have proved as comforting as one automatically generated for me by Microsoft this morning.
As
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