Returned from week away to find house awash - with information, which had sprung forth from every available source in home during our absence.

After waiting almost a day at Innsbruck airport for blizzard to subside, enabling take off and return to joys of British spring, arrived home in the early hours to find self, husband and two very tired Rugrats locked out, even though keys appeared to function properly.

Obstacle to entrance to own home was, it turned out, mountain of post which had accumulated on other side of door, causing mini avalanche when husband finally stopped checking he was using the right key and resorted to brute force. Once avalanche had been shovelled up and sorted, original mass of post reduced to about three letters each, while rest added to European junk mail mountain. Exhausted by our efforts, we put Rugrats to bed and tried to briefly relax but distracted by flashing light of ansaphone.

Thirty six messages later - a combination of work calls for me, work calls for husband, social calls for Rugrats (sadly none for us), calls from someone wanting us to make a will and culminating in long rambling message from elderly relative - decided we must buy ansaphone that cuts people off after limited period and leave brisk message telling caller to leave brisk message, or else...

For some reason, despite fact it was now the next morning, husband saw information inundation as a challenge to which he was ready to rise. So decided to check voicemail on mobile phone. Five calls from his golfing partner and someone wanting him to make a will later he asked me if I wanted to check mine. Hooray! Only three, and all repeats from some of the thirty six on land-line ansaphone.

At this point we could have (a) gone to bed (the most sensible option), (b) unpacked and sorted through European washing mountain (could wait till next day) or (c) decided to check email. Husband decided on the latter and was disappointed that his office had not found him indispensable and that his out of office auto reply had dispensed with the few people that had tried to contact him anyway.

Wanting to prove that, while tapping away at keyboard in former boot cupboard that is now my office, was doing valuable work for editors who find self indispensable decided to check own email. Inbox read 53 new messages. Five of these turned out to be work related. Seven were from life assurance company which offers me life assurance on a daily basis, seven from debt help company which offers me help with my debts on a daily basis (even though I've told them I have no debts) and the rest were from a new junk emailer - a sex website which has somehow got explicit suggestiveness of subject matter) on what seemed to be an hourly basis.

So, after a relaxing week in the Austrian Alps, we started the next jaded by the task of destroying, deleting, dealing with and responding to the various messages and requests which had filled our former home, now receptacle for junk messages of every possible form. Fortunately we were able to fortify ourselves with the 21 pits of sour milk, left on the doorstep by the milkman who hadn't seen the big note saying NO MILK, as the postman seemed to have slipped it through the door with the rest of the junk mail.