pumpkinstrokemarrow

Now back on the air at darkest Epsom. On the whole, not a bad experience from the people at the BT Broadband "we are here to help you and your call is important to us" Corporation Inc, but they could do with a bit of joining up. Maybe the people at Banglalore should be connected electronically to the people who do the telephone lines.

So, for the full story read on. On Wednesday afternoon, this being day 5 of cold turkey, pleased to see two vans and two engineers at the bottom of the road. Deeply engaged in some rather uncomfortable hole. Ah they say. Water in the hole. Very old fashioned hole. Much rewiring needed. But you should be back on the air. Back to house. No telephone or broadband. Back to the hole. Oh dear. That's odd. Not too long later, the telephone reappears. But no broadband. Sorry guv. That's a matter for the broadband people. When you ring them up, say that you need a broadband engineer not a telephone engineer. Then we get into Banglalore again. Their call record must be getting quite long by now, far too long to be read by a tired help desk operator. Would you like to try connecting the grey cable to the black box again? No. Much muttering in the background. We are very busy you know. Some minutes later, some rigmarole about how I have got to get in touch with the telephone people in order to close that part of the call off before the Broadband people in Banglolore can take the matter any further. And you had better leave it until late morning tomorrow give the chaps time to check in with the work that they have done today.

So having done much deep breathing, phone the telephone people mid morning today. Much would you like to key in your telephone number and for security reasons can you tell me the name of your father in law's poodle. Eventually they explain that all this is nothing to do with them and I really ought to be talking to the Broadband helpdesk at Bangalore. More deep breathing, then once more into the breach. No. I do not want to play with the grey cable, or the black box, or my screwdriver. Oh dear sir. How are we supposed to help you if you don't want to play? (I do sympathise. But being asked for the n-th time to check something, when you are fairly sure it is working OK, gets wearing). Heavy breathing at my end. Would sir like to hang on while we test the line again. After a few minutes of silence I hang up and they phone me back. Would sir please hang on. After about 10 minutes of this the broadband connection mysteriously reappears, and with my not having played with my screwdriver at all.

So the thing is fixed, for now at least. And I do feel sorry for the poor saps in Bangalore - who must, if all this is anything to go by, get a lot of abuse. There is no-one else to shout at. But the system could do with a bit of TLC.

By way of contrast, renewed my car tax disc over the phone. This involved no humans at all, did involve a certain amount of please key in the 16 digit reference number on page 2 of your reminder letter, but did work first time. And to make this really easy, they had cunningly arranged to have access to my MOT and insurance records, so I did not need to key in any 16 digit references numbers about that.

Back at the allotment, the broad beans are starting to show. So progress on that front. And we should be able to get some onions in tomorrow.

And some very fine hot cross buns from Cheam. Not very yellow but light and fluffy. Maybe try some toasted tomorrow.