Why I did not get dressed till 4pm on Monday;

Dear Global Organisation, Omnipotently, Greedily, Lurking Everywhere, I would like a new email address please.

Of course. Just take a seat and pop your will to live in the bin by your feet.

I’m hoping to be able to choose my address this time. The last address I had was just some made up shit invented by you.

No problem. Make yourself comfy as you may be here for the rest of your natural life.

As I already have one of your Magnificent ‘pokes its fingers into all of my pies’ Accounts, I assume I can just add an extra address and ignore, or better still, delete the shit one?

Oh my dear girl. How naive you are. We have to make it slightly more complex than that otherwise how could we justify our existence? Just follow the on-screen instructions and we’ll have you up and running with your new email address this side of the Apocalypse. Or the Year 3000, whichever happens last;

1. Please log on to your Fabulous ‘We know what you did last summer and where you buy your knickers from’ Account and select the email service you would like to delete.
2. Select ‘save all my data in case it all goes tits up’.
3. Take the next four hours out to decipher where we’re going to save your data and how you may retrieve it.
4. Now hit ‘delete service’ and type in an alternative email address that we can send a verification notice to.
5. Grab your hair by the handful as you are going to pull it all out, because we’re not happy with the alternative email address you’ve given us. We know it’s been in use for 17 years, we know we’re already synched and we know it’s your default address. But right at this moment, we don’t like it. And as a sidenote, we’re not going to offer you any explanation or propose what you do next.
6. Dig back through 5 years of forums to find that hidden gem from that one savvy user that knows that we won’t help you.
7. Follow the savvy user’s clear, comprehensive instructions.
8. Have a hissy fit because you’ve learnt that you have to delete the WHOLE of the Glorious Account to delete the email address associated with it. If you want another address, you have to open ANOTHER Incredible Account.
9. If you’re still breathing, wipe the foam from your mouth and concentrate on the screen. You will need to re-check and reset EVERY SINGLE SETTING that you had on your previous Spectacular Account. You may recall this initially took you 3 years, 17 bottles of vodka and £9000 for that Computer Science Degree.
10. If you would like to synchronise your new email address with your default address, we will still deny knowing it exists.
11. Before making your new email address public, we highly recommend you test it with someone you can trust, because we will fuck this up for you good and proper. Be sure that your recipient cares about you and your sanity enough to withstand the expletive ugliness that will pour forth when you realise your new email does not work.
12. Be sure to leave positive feedback on your experience, because whatever device you use, whichever portal you enter, we are here on the other side watching you. Logging your every move, like, dislike, purchase and interaction.
    Thankyou for using our services. Like you had a choice.

And that’s why I did not get dressed till 4pm on Monday.

UPDATE, MARCH 2019: Readers will be delighted to learn, I did eventually get the new email to work. Its purpose was to be my default email address for submissions of a writerly comedic nature. It was carefully chosen to include elements of my real name, my showbiz name and to adhere to rules that require email addresses only from trusted providers.

Readers may be vexed to learn, this email address has now vanished. Inexplicably. Without warning. Discovery of this fact whilst submitting a ……. errr ……. submission. The subsequent hoops provided enough entertainment for the deadline to pass. At the time of writing, the email address remains lost. The account makers were contacted, but declined to be interviewed or make any comment at this time.