With only five to ten more years to work out how to log in to my pension plan I need to get a move on.

The Fidelity website is so impenetrable to someone like me that, aged 50, I fear I will have run out of time to get access to ‘planviewer’ by the time I am 65, never mind 55.

They write to me all the time, asking me to verify this or that by scanning a QR code and entering a reference, along with my National Insurance number, but it never works.

‘Sorry, we are unable to find your details in our system. Please make sure you have entered all of your information correctly. If the problem persists, please call us on…’

Persists? It never stops. It’s been defeating me for years. When I email to tell them I can’t log in they send back an email which is encrypted so I have to log in to see their answer about why I can’t log in.

When I ring, I hold for an age before a nice Irishman looks up my plan and says: ‘Ah, here it is.’

‘You mean you’re able to log in to my pension?’ I asked the last time I did this. ‘Yes, I’m in.’ ‘Well, would it be too much to ask for me to get in too?’ Because while listening to him looking at my pension was reassuring, it was not nearly as good as me looking at it.

I read him the reference code I’m always being sent, which could be seen as beginning C, then O or it could be C, then zero. That, in itself, could have kept me locked out for a good five years.

He confirmed that it was C zero and we moved on to my NI number. I said what I thought that was, from memory, and he went away to ‘check something with my supervisor’. When he came back he said they had it down wrong.

‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Now hang on. Have you got it wrong or have I got it wrong?’ And I said it again, only a bit different because I’m never sure whether it’s 55 twice or 75 twice in the middle.

I tried it both ways, but he said neither of those were on their system. I scratched my head. The problem about theoretically nearing retirement age and needing to actually look at your pension account is that you’ve never been so ill equipped to do such a thing.

I said: ‘Can you wait while I try and find something with my NI number on it?’

I had held for half an hour listening to the same five bars of sub Richard Clayderman piano music repeated over and over, so I begged: ‘Don’t ever leave me, will you?’

He promised he wouldn’t. I flung open all the drawers and cupboards in my desk and starting pulling papers out. ‘Are you still there?’ I called into the phone on speaker as I tore unopened envelopes open and riffled through old tax returns.

I ransacked every folder full of papers until my entire existence was thrown all over the floor, then an age-old letter dropped from a bundle and there it was: ‘I’ve got it!’ I read it out, and it was precisely as I had first said it from memory.

‘That’s not what we’ve got,’ he said, ‘so we will have to change that. It will take five working days.’

I’ve made so many failed attempts to log in, I’ve hung on the phone so long, and I’ve sent so many emails, that I did not dare to dream the problem was finally sorted with so prosaic a solution.

So I said: ‘Can we just do some of the things your latest letter is asking me to do now, over the phone, like update my contact details?’ He said he would do that. ‘And it also says I have to nominate my beneficiaries.’

He said he could not do that. I would have to log in to ‘planviewer’ in five days’ time. But he could email me the documents and I could send them back by post if I preferred. I said I did.

Because now it’s been put in writing that I have not named a beneficiary, it’s just my luck I’ll get run over by a bus before the system lets me in.

I’m determined that whatever it takes, even if it has to happen from beyond the grave, with the builder boyfriend logging in by poking the keys of his iPhone with one finger, and even if the economy totally collapses, and there’s nothing in it but two shillings and an old button, I’m not going to be frozen out of my pension by a blasted computer system.

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