I DON'T know if you remember the TV advert from last year with movie actor Kevin Bacon talking about 'BufferFace' - the look people have as they wait for internet pages to load.

It had some weird and wonderful looks, with people exhibiting despair, boredom, irritation, tedium and annoyance as they waited for pages to load.

In short, the message was that 'BufferFace' was rarely flattering - and made people look like they were away in their own wee world.

And although that blank, confused stare in the advert actually referred to people who were waiting for things to load on their smartphones, there's no doubt that a similar physiognomical phenomenon has probably been seen in manys a farm office in recent weeks - as we've attempted to fill in our on-line Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) claims.

And more than once, while I've been waiting for the next page of the Single Application Form (SAF) to load or the latest in a never ending catalogue of validation errors to explain itself to me, I've found my concentration slipping and my mind beginning to wander…

SAF: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the CAP Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new regulations, to seek out new complexities and complications, to boldly go where no computer system has gone before.

Captain Richard T Lochhead, SAF-fleet captain of the SNP Federation, finds himself and his ship adrift and powerless in deep space as the SAF application deadline approaches at warp speed.

"Captain's log, SAFdate 14/06/2015: With each and every attempt we have made to define active farmers thrown back by the Treaty of Romeulans, we have been unable to wipe out our sworn enemies, the Clinging-on Slipper Farmers - and all our efforts to move towards simplification have been totally annihilated.

"Armed only with a small 450-strong team of crack computer programmers, all with phasers set to stun, we are currently all that stands between Scottish farmers and the Wrath of Khan't fill in the forms."

Suddenly the intercom whistles on the bridge of ruralpayments.org , alerting Captain Richard T Lochhead to a problem in the engine bay:

"It's the dilithium crystals cap'n," comes the voice of the ship's trusted chief engineer, Scot Govie, "they jus' canna tak ony more - one more application and the whole system's goin' tae blow."

"Perhaps, captain, if I might make a suggestion," a pointy-eared first programmer interjects, "if we re-routed the photon torpedoes through the unused SRDP portal and deflected the resulting surge through the mainframe that might just give us enough power to get a few more applications in before she goes critical."

"What do you think Barnes?" asks the captain.

"For God's sake Jim, I mean Richard, I'm a civil servant, not a computer programmer - ask Scot Govie in the engineering deck"

"Well Scot Govie?"

"Its' a crazy idea, but it might just work," replies Scot Govie."

However, before he decided that you "cannae change the laws o' physics" the next page finally loaded, interrupting my reverie.

Of course, it didn't take long for 'BufferFace' to reappear and my eyes to glaze over again…

"Good evening I'm Cleremy Jarckson and welcome to tonight's episode of 'Top Computer Gear'.

"And in a packed show tonight we take a close look at SGRPID's latest computer system and the recent attempts to stick a few more horsepower where it's needed and give the system enough get up and go to get the job done.

"Much criticised for lacking the energy to pull the skin off even a reduced calorie, low fat rice pudding, it's recently been given the works in the engine department - and from under the bonnet out go the two nervous hamsters and in goes a pair of rutting rhinoceroses: giving it a whole lot more… P-O-W-E-R.

"But have we really seen a new V-12 slotted in there to give it enough oomph to cope with the last minute rush of several thousand applications yet to come - or have we just seen a go-faster stripe painted on the side and a big speaker slotted in the boot?

"There was, of course, only one way to find and that was to take it round our test track - which meant handing it over to our tame mixed cropping farmer:

"Some say that the only Single Application Form he's ever filled in was for a dodgy dating agency - and that no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't tell his buffer strip from his margin.

"All we know is he's called The Stook…"

But I'm pretty sure that everyone will have developed their own little diversion to distract them from the seemingly endless 'BufferFace' waiting in order to preserve their sanity - and perhaps I'll better spare you the Baywatch slow-mo scenario…