To dispel a few rumours.
I am neither dead, nor in jail, nor in the middle of nowhere.
The reason for my going offline and being incommunicado, was the closely spaced failure of my computer, and loss of my income.
Just managed to get enough for a new laptop and lab upgrade, after being stuck on just £20 a week, for everything, food, drink, clothing, transport etc.
Right about when I had my comp fail, and lost my source of income, I also had the shite luck of somebody stealing the very equipment and supplies I had in reserve as a rainy-day-fund in potentiae, so things in my life got reduced, for a long time, to sleeping, and when there was anything available, eating.
Basically, as things all worked out, got kicked hard a couple of times while already down, economically speaking.
So I basically had no way to get online, other than to snatch a few minutes here and there to run one or two essentials.
BUT, I have lost my hotmail address due to time elapsed without use, so am going to have to sort all that out, thankfully my gmail kept some of my most valued contacts, but I did end up losing years and years of stuff, not to mention the contents of the failed HDs.
was it something I said?