Ever since the end of August my computer has been having problems staying connected.

The computer people have spent hours trying to sort it out and when they said they had found the cause - 'Windows wasn't managing the connection' - they took it away and started again from scratch.

A few minutes after they had set it all up again here, it went offline.

It has to be said that nine times out of ten it will work if you restart it but that doesn't make it any less annoying when it goes offline in the middle of something important. I've already lost a post that way. (And this one but I copied it before trying to save.)

I have come to the conclusion that there is no point in calling the French 'experts' back, so after searching the net (on Bear's computer) I came up with various pages of technical suggestions from Microsoft.

Two attempts at following instructions made it worse. Thank goodness I managed to reverse my actions.

In the end I emailed the 'microsoft support' and had a prompt reply giving me the helpline number in France. I replied that I needed help in English and that's why I had contacted them.

The reply - again prompt - informed me that American products were not the same as European ones. Oops. I thought I was communicating with England.

Next step was to track down the helpline in the UK. I phoned, pressed all the buttons when prompted and waited.

A lady with a pronounced Indian accent greeted me and I explained the problem.

"We can't help you if you bought the product in France" she insisted and wouldn't accept the fact that talking in French about computer problems would be extremely difficult.

"They will speak English at Microsoft in France" were her parting words.

So, I tried again. Fortunately the alternatives for button pressing were the same as the English helpline but when I'd finished there was a very long wait. Then I glance at my watch. It was ten past twelve. "Bet they're all having lunch" I muttered to myself.

Sure enough, when I tried a little after two o'clock there was a quick response from a friendly French chap. I asked if he spoke English.

"A leetle" he replied and we continued in a mixture of French and English with lots of repetition. But this was only to ascertain whether or not I was entitled to help and, if so, to produce a dossier.

The formalities over, he agreed that my Windows XP was genuine and said they were not used to dealing with English XP but would have a go.

I said I had tried the English helpline but they had refused to help. He was amazed.

"But we are all in Europe now."

Eventually he gave me a dossier number and asked me to hold while he put me through to the technical helpline.

A chap called Christophe answered. He didn't speak English either and there was a problem with the dossier number.

More music - and then a young lady came on the line. It seems I had misheard the number and written down an extra two figures.

Back to the technicians and a different chap. Who didn't speak English either.

We went through a few hoops but without success. He remained charming and patient throughout but it was painfully obvious that some computer terms are totally different in French and English.

At last, he gave up and said they did have one chap who spoke good English. The bad news was that he was off sick.

The good news is that he is due back tomorrow and should phone me in the morning.

As soon as I got my computer back online I wrote an email to the Microsoft UK support feedback manager to tell him what I thought of their UK helpline.