Meet Ewen

This is Ewen.

And Ewen is my new hero.

Ewen is one of those individuals who you don't meet often in life. In fact, he is unique in my own experience.

Because Ewen is a computer whizz who doubles up as a real person.

And when I say "real," I mean he's interesting, he's funny, he's kind, he's generous, he's very well-rounded - and he's most definitely not a geek.

Last night Ewen came round to our house to install a new hard drive and some extra memory in this former claptrack of a PC on which I'm now working.

And, thanks to his efforts, this ex-tower of frustration now feels like something akin to a thoroughbred racehorse.

It's sleek, it's fast as lightning and it's a dead cert to make me happy (I had to rummage around for a third reason and that was the best I could do. Sorry. In fact, it doesn't smell like a horse, making it even better than a thoroughbred in my view. But let's move on).

Ewen, who first offered some weeks ago to have a look at my shrivelled piece of equipment (and yes, I am still taking about the PC), said at the time that the work should take him about half an hour. In the end, he was here for around four and a half (powered, in the main, by Jaffa Cakes).

Much of the reason for his extended shift was because he very charitably performed a lot more hi-tech tricks than I could reasonably have expected. But the remaining time was because the PC was just so ridiculously slow.

In fact, when he sought to carry out one particular piece of magic to quicken up the speed of the original hard drive, the first estimate displayed on-screen for how long the job would take was "27 days." Thankfully it took a lot less than that.

But to summarise: all hail Ewen.