Confession, I am far more comfortable performing domestic tasks than I am negotiating a computer's various functions and its associated applications, so integral to today's communications systems and lifestyles. My lifestyle was set long before computers became widely available and useful to today's society.

I'm able to casually and without too much contemplation, imagine a recipe and set about performing the simple and satisfying tasks of creating meals, and baked goods with no lack of enthusiasm. Planning seems unnecessary; immediately I decide what I want to accomplish; as an example this morning, to bake chocolate cupcakes for this evening's dessert, the ingredients are set out upon my baking island and I just put everything together in no time.

True, I became accustomed to using a computer while I was still in the paid workforce, but I've been retired for exactly twenty years, now. And computers and their software have advanced tremendously since then. The neural networks in my brain have experienced a bit of a challenge attempting to keep up with all those advances.

And now, I find, that despite my familiarity and comfort with using the Internet and software enabling users to communicate I've been jolted out of that comfort zone. I appear to have trapped myself involuntarily into a really irritating and upsetting position. It all started a week ago when I began programming a new computer. I bookmarked all the sites of importance to me.

And I realized that Outlook Express was no longer available, since Microsoft no longer makes it a tool available free of charge, but instead charges a monthly fee for its use. So I decided to open an email account with Google, using GMail. And while setting it up thought it would be a good idea to import my settings and contacts and emails I'd saved on my Outlook account. My Internet provider is Bell Canada.

I set everything in motion then watched, horrified, as tens of thousands of emails I had deleted over the years landed in my new GMail account. Why the server with Bell Sympatico keeps these ancient, deleted items is beyond me. Why it would release them in one fell swoop to a new email account is mystifying. When I set about deleting them from the GMail account, since I was advised that over half of my available space was now being used, I could only delete 50 at a time, a Herculean task when dealing with 52,000 unwanted emails, some of which I had marked years ago as junk, other blocked and the remainder deleted day by day.

When I contacted Bell customer service and spoke to an (overseas) technician he, acting on behalf of Bell, was less than sympatico. Informing me he could do nothing, but Bell would be happy to provide me with the unlimited services of a technician on call who would take charge of my email problems for a monthly charge of only $6. Strange, since it's their server that ran amok. Service is not quite as it was years ago when what Bell is now charging for came with your service contract.

It was suggested by a helpful sales clerk where I'd acquired the new computer that I simply delete the GMail account I'd just set up. That would rid me of the emails junking up wasted space. And then begin anew with a new GMail account, bypassing the invitation to import everything from my Outlook email account.  Good idea! I went through all the requisite steps to delete. And then began the process to acquire a new, untainted-by-Outlook account. To no avail; my original popped right back up, though I'd given the 'new' one a different address.

And now I'm still stuck in this stupid dilemma.