I once did a book jacket for a book of this title, the day after putting a floorboard through a ceiling.

Well recently there’s been a lot of bodging going on and this time not by me. I love technology and I like being on line, which is obvious or I’d not be doing this sort of thing. I like it to work and recently it has not, so in a fit of “lets get this sorted out” I decided to change my internet service provider to Origin Broadband  #originbroadband . I did not want to go with the big boys as their feedback on line was less than encouraging. There, near the top of the small providers, with loads of great comments about customer service was Origin, company that looked like they could do it for me. I rang them and they talked sense, that is once I was past the voice activated phone messages. You know the sort of thing, press 1 for sales, press 2 if you are an existing customer, press 3 for technical support, press 57918775127659175917591751297###65 for complaints.

I’m joking about the last one.

However, they do use someone remarkably like Brian Blessed for their phone voice so be warned, it’s a bit loud. Anyone not familiar with the name should look him up, he’s a fine British actor who has a voice so loud it could probably clear an entire field full of feasting pigeons in a corn field with a simple “Hello!”

I asked Origin if the change over from one supplier to themselves would be painless and instant. The word they used was seamless. Well, in the event it was seamless, they really dropped their trousers there were so few seams in it. The sad thing is it wasn’t their fault.

If you change suppliers here in the UK, in this instance from a standard phone internet line to a fibre broadband, some geezer has to come out in a van and go to a green box on the side of the road near your house. This geezer then just has to find the right wire and make sure that it is connected to the right line. High tech it is not. The geezers that do this are BT Openreach. The company that own the infrastructure: all the lines. They won’t let anyone else touch them. in this instance the geezer did not join the wires and left us high and dry for 5 days.No landline, no internet. Another much more proficient bt geezer came today and fixed it, saying something like ” Unlike some engineers I can count”.

I thought it wise to take the matter up with the Origin, which I did, once I’d got past Brian. I commended them on their fine customer service, which it is so far, but lamented the fact that they have to entrust such a vital task as joining wires to BT Openreach.

It’s like trusting the circus clown to catch you on the high wire when he’s never been up there. I bet Brian Blessed wouldn’t do that.