1. The page may be extinct, like pterodactyls, good manners and a general ability  to do simple arithmetic without a calculator.

2. The page may have moved, like football managers who fail to win the world cup,  our Ludlow flood victims,  or the earth for some young ladies on a Saturday night.

3. Make sure you have spelt everything korrectly. There is to much lousy spellin and gramma on the webb these days.

4. The webwallah made a mistake creating a link (the more likely). Mistakes do happen  viz.  Chernobyl,  joining the EC,  the Titanic, invading Iraq and allowing MPs to claim expenses.

5. Our web server may be malfunctioning. This can happen to large complicated technical systems. Remember Apollo 13,  American precision bombing,  our own high speed train?

6. The item never existed in the first place. Previous  such hoaxes have been the Hitler diaries,  the Piltdown man,  and the death of Elvis. 

7.  Bad Luck. This sometimes happens - regularly in football matches, frequently in Las Vegas and invariably sitting on a lunch club table with you-know-who.

8. Ancient curse. Who knows just how the curses of  Tutankhamen, The Ancient Mariner  or  Harry Ramsden,   have affected your chips.

9.  Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  Use his  formula:    ∆x = ∆√ (x2) - 2(x) ~ ∆x ∆p ≤ ђ∕2   to reveal the problem.    Alternatively  ask Schrödinger's cat.

10. You were looking for the page that our lawyer advised us to take down.

11. Perhaps you have reached the very last page on the internet ?

12. The page has genuinely, but accidentally,  been lost

13. Alternatively, it could be Daisy the secretary's fault. She should have fetched the file you were asking for. Instead of getting on with the job she was probably either flirting with John from accounts, or discussing the latest gossip with Jane from reception. The only thing she certainly wasn't doing was fetching the file for you.  Sorry, but it is hard to get the right staff these days. Our sincere apologies. We hope this experience is not going to discourage you to continue visiting our website.

14.  If none of the above apply in your case,  can we ask you to contact Microsoft Technical Support ?  You will need to give them details of your configuration, the exact sequence of events leading to the problem, and the status of your software licences. They will then consult their extensive knowledge base systems and fault-finding dialogues before instructing you how to re-boot and try again.

(a) Hitting the keyboard and mouse buttons harder has now been proved to make the Internet work faster. New functionality in XP, Vista and Windows 7 ensures that those who hit hardest get the best response. So, if you typed the address in the Address bar, type it again but hit each key much harder.

(b) Click the Refresh button really hard.  If the response is slow, repeatedly clicking on the same button causes IP routers to give priority to your request.

(c) Internet performance can be improved by issuing the verbal command "Come on, come on" to your monitor.  Sophisticated sound equipment in your PC will respond to many phrases, including some mild profanity.

(d) Rapid side-to-side movement of your mouse, followed by giving it four sharp raps on your desk is known to cause Windows to re-prioritise your Internet session and allocate more CPU resources to hardware response functions.

(e) If you are trying to reach a secure site, make sure you wiggle your internet network cable where it plugs into your PC.

(f) With a CRT monitor, a slapping motion with your hand to the side of the monitor increases your  PC's bus speed by 10%, as does knocking on the glass and calling out "Hello?''.

(g) A table-tennis bat is ideal for performing percussive maintenance tasks on your computer. The very large heavyweight hammers,  as used by skilled car mechanics,  should be avoided.

(h) Hitting the "Back" button concurrently with the expletive "Damn!" usually works for me, but you can always return to our Home page here.