I found the IT support staff in their “office” – a windowless former post room, about the size of a cleaner’s cupboard. One of them was soldering a home-made PC while the other clearly had nothing to do.

Neither paid any attention when I started to explain the problem. It was only when my voice cracked that they looked up and noticed the tears pouring down my face. Now they would take my plight seriously.

Did they please have sufficient knowledge of Linux to rename the hacked directories on my H: drive? It was highly embarrassing to be associated with a directory structure that included a folder called “boobies”.