These tiny dots on a small memory drive represented thousands of data - now all gone. Last week the laptop stopped working necessitating an expensive repair. Fortunately most of the files were backed up but recently I had been very lax and had lost a lot. Moral - back up constantly.
During the last four days we are having yet more problems with the landline and internet and so far the engineers have not located the problem. Perhaps the rodents have been nibbling the cables again. Meanwhile I will try to upload this when the wifi works and apologise for not commenting on blips.