I spoke too soon. Verity, my laptop, will not be feasting in Valhalla. The treasure-laden longship, piled high with firewood, dragon sail unfurled and billowing, will not be needed now. The torches I had ready to cast into that ship can be put out. No spectacular Viking Funeral for her yet.
Whatever glitch stopped her charging up the smaller of her two batteries has apparently unglitched itself. That battery, which had run down to 0% charge, has returned to 100%:
And it's now once more possible to detach the screen, walk away from the keyboard base, and use the screen as an independent tablet. Well, for as long as its small battery lasts!
It's quite a magical transformation, and in theory it's handy to have the ability to disconnect the screen and wander away with it into another room, leaving the keyboard part attached to sundry cables and plug-ins. But in fact I've never used my Surface Book in Tablet Mode, not for any practical purpose.
Anyway, Verity is triumphantly back, and firing on all cylinders. But I have no idea whether this astonishing revival is going to be permanent. For now, though, it's most welcome and a great relief. I hadn't looked forward to coping with the uncertainties of a limping laptop, let alone splashing out on a new one at great cost.
I think some will say: this is a warning. Don't buy another Surface Book. Well, this is the first hardware problem I've had after five years of intensive use. So I'm not going to complain at the service I've had from Verity, which has been loyal and faithful, and includes (since mid-April 2016) the processing of roughly 80,000 photographs and scans, and the writing of some 800 blog posts.
The real issue is, how much will I want to spend further down the line, when the natural time to buy a replacement comes around? I've got a feeling that it won't be luxury-machine money. Not if I need the cash for something connected with buying that all-electric car I've been talking about...
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Lucy Melford