I am usually a very quiet, patient, calm, peaceful lady. The last person to lose their temper, be sarcastic, shout or pick an argument. Something seems to have changed lately…
It all started with the arrival of the man from the Environment Agency last Thursday. He is very concerned because several of my neighbours have failed to pressed 1 to acknowledge their automated telephone message. Do I know where they are? Yes I do know. They have gone out. Which would appear to indicate a major flaw with the new automated flood warning system. Shame nobody thought about that before they removed the flood sirens which had worked perfectly well for 50 years, and then spent a fortune of taxpayers’ money on a lot of computer equipment. Yes I do know where the sandbags are. Yes I do have a shovel thank you. And yes I do know it is extremely dangerous to go down to the beach today as I might get swept out to sea. I have absolutely no intention of doing so as it is p***ing down with rain, I am still in my pyjamas and “Little House On The Prairie” is coming on in a minute. So what it is you want me to do? Go and fill sandbags. With the sand on the beach. Yes funnily enough I do have a few questions. Like why are the Environment Agency murdering innocent badgers? Or why can nobody from the EA grasp the fact that there is a very steep slope up from the beach which means my house won’t flood unless there is a fifty foot tidal wave, but they still persist in placing this street in the highest flood risk category which means we pay a fortune for insurance cover.
The next morning I switch on the computer and find I have no internet connection. I am not particularly surprised as my neighbour said that the part of town where the telephone exchange is has got flooded. So I phone our Broadband provider and say that I presume that my internet is down to the flooding. Can they just please confirm this and if possible give an idea of how long it will take to get fixed? Unfortunately I find myself speaking to a gentleman with a very heavy accent who is located on another continent and knows nothing about any floods. He has a script and he isn’t going to deviate from it under any circumstances. So we check all the cables, reboot the PC and the WiFi Router, and take a screwdriver to the faceplate of the phone socket. The verdict is that there must be a fault with the PC. I ended up having to pass the phone over to my husband as I shouted so much that I lost my voice.
We give it another 24 hours but there is still no internet and I have urgent stuff to do. So I find my mobile dongle. The credit has expired. But that’s no problem as I know I’ll be allowed temporary access to the top up page. What is a problem is that the credit card I registered with them has expired and I’m not being allowed access to the page I need to update the details. Or to the page that would let me register another card. So I have to phone another call centre. Can they please take my card details over the phone? Of course they can. After I have been onto their website and changed the card expiry date first. So how do they propose I do this with no money on the dongle and no Broadband? With my Smartphone. I patiently explain to the nice man that I don’t have a Smartphone. He’s got the answer to this, he proposes to put me through to the Sales Department so I can buy one! 20 minutes later I finally manage to speak to someone with some common sense and I get the dongle topped up. We then discover that the dongle might have had perfect reception when we were travelling but it doesn’t work indoors.
The next day we go to Tescos. My husband puts a copy of The Radio Times in the trolley. He is looking forward to reading it when we get home. The check out lady is having problems scanning it. She calls a Supervisor. The Radio Times is confiscated. It has not been correctly input on the stock computer so we can’t have it. No she can’t override the computer and put the sale through manually, even though the price is clearly printed on the cover, as the staff can’t be trusted due to employee fraud. I did manage to control my temper as we had bought quite a lot of frozen food and I didn’t wanted it thawing while they fetched the Store Manager. We went home via the local Newsagents. We will not be returning to Tescos.
Monday was my weigh in day. I have lost a pound. The Dietician is not impressed and reminds me of the arrangement. The feeding tube can’t come out till I have maintained my weight for 3 consecutive weeks. No she will not let me off, she does not agree that down a pound is nothing, down a pound is a loss. I must try again next week.
I have just sent a message to my Medical Team to advise them that if they don’t send someone round my house to remove the feeding tube before Christmas that I will be ripping the f***ing thing out myself. I await their reply.
