The really stupid thing is a couple of weeks back my HDD had started playing up and I did in fact start to do a backup but then my daughter came home from work, supper was needing to be prepared and so I cancelled it telling myself I would sort it all soon when I had more time.... sometimes I seriously need to take my own advice.
Fortunately I had recently printed all the current client invoices ready for my accountant... I would have been in a right pickle; and lots of client work had been emailed as PDFs so I have managed to save all of those - luckily my publishing program is able to open a PDF as a working file.
My daughter pointed out yesterday that it was the start of the Chinese New Year and that maybe it was fortuitous as I would no longer be able to rely on reworking old files and that maybe having to pretty much start work from scratch this would allow me to be more creative. Bless, she is such a treasure. Also it could have been so much worse... no one is ill, the house hasn't burned down, the pets are all ok... it most definitely isn't the end of the world, just very inconvenient.
So today I have ordered a new hard drive plus numerous pen drives. I'm now going to pop the kettle on, roll up my sleeves, pull up my big-girl pants and just get on it... because "After all tomorrow is another day".