The Daily Novel

The BT engineer arrived as I was finishing an early breakfast. He had to climb the telephone pole outside the house to get to the source of the problem. Two of the wires to the box there were seriously corroded. So the problems I have been having are nothing to do with what I have done. Proving once again that co-incidence often happens. The corrosion had obviously been happening progressively for some time. All I did wrong was to buy the house just at the time that the corrosion had got so bad that the line stopped working properly.

According to the engineer this does not necessarily prove that the problems getting Broadband up and running  resulted from the same cause. Because he said that broadband can work with only one good wire. So I cannot yet be certain that my broadband problems are over. But at least I have a fully working telephone line which I can use to chase up Sky if it stops again. And use to chase up Southern Electric whose overhead line has got mixed up with the apple tree in my back garden. And also to chase up the gas company. They dug up part of my drive on Monday looking for a leak under the road. They found it and fixed it. But it was not the engineer’s job to fill in the holes.  So to get in and out I have to negotiate a passage between two holes and piles of earth surrounded by red boards.

They should be round to put it right ‘in two or three weeks’ the engineer said. I hope they can do it more quickly.

The sun is shining over Charmouth but Chesil Beach and Portland Bill are in dark outline with clouds threatening storms to come. The storms are already raging inside me. My broadband has been in out constantly over the last few days. My phone has sometimes been working in, sometimes out, and then mostly with interference.

This morning when I awoke I could not get a dialling tone but the broadband was working so I went in to the BT website, to try and get some help that way. I went through all the procedures but when I entered the request to test my number it told me that my phone could not be tested right now. So I called the technical support number on my mobile.

Miraculously, compared with my recent experience of BT, I got a human being immediately. It was Monica, which spoke clearly and responded to my complaints with great courtesy. When I explained how many hours I had spent on the telephone to BT over these matters she offered to call my mobile back so that we could continue our conversation at BT’s expense.

Unhappily, she could not solve my problem, because BT did not recognise the number, although I have been paying for it since the first of August. Only sales could help me, so she transferred me to sales. Then I was given the usual range of options and was told several times how busy they were. But this time they played me Beethoven for a while. When the music stopped I was told I was being put through to a customer services rep.

The phone rang and rang and rang. Although I had not had breakfast I gritted my teeth and held on to the phone. For about three quarters of an hour. Then I finally got another human being. BT does employ one or two apparently. This time it was a man who explained that they could send an engineer but if the fault was mine I would have to pay a call-out charge of £116. When I repeated the whole saga and explained that Sky thought it was a problem with the antiquated BT exchange he relented and promised to send an engineer tomorrow at their expense and fix whatever was wrong.

So I wrote a few emails. Then the broadband went down. A while later I picked up the telephone. Mystery of mysteries. I got a dialling tone. I quickly phoned the Co-op Bank to pay off a credit card. Then attempted to do the same with my John Lewis card. Before they could connect me to a customer services rep the phone went dead.

So I went down to the village, did some shopping and lunched on the local ham, lots of olives and washed it down with a small gin and tonic. And went back to the computer and found that the broadband was working again.

For how long I still don’t know. So I will post this now.

Thanks to Sky technical support got back online last night. But the telephone has gone bananas. And the broadband connection has just timed out. Perhaps I should go down to the beach and try floating a bottle with a blog inside hoping it will be picked up by someone who has a reliable broadband connection.

Meanwhile have to drive my brother-in-law to Dorchester to catch his coach.

Blogging from the kitchenIt is only 6.15 AM but there is a lot of bustle in the kitchen because has my eldest daughter has to catch the 7 AM train from Axminster. My desktop computer is in the kitchen at the instructions of Sky technical support. It is the nearest point to the main phone socket in the house.

Today I got online again at tea-time, thanks to a very helpful man from technical support at Sky. He suggested that my problems may be to do with the fact that I was using a long line to link to my computer in my study. So I moved my computer to the kitchen where I could connect direct with the Sky cable to the point in the hall outside, which is the first point the telephone cable coming into the house arrives.

Joy of joys. I was connected again instantly, with the I icon on the modem shining a bright and steady green. My son-in-law, who came in just then, was able to connect via me on his laptop and send an important email. Half an hour later, after engaging in social matters (I am, believe it not, on holiday), I found the magic green I had disappeared yet again.

Hours later, after doing many other things, it suddenly occurred to me that the main connection point might not be the first link in the chain, because my vendor did not use the socket in the hall, she worked from the socket in the nearby kitchen.

So I switched the connection to the kitchen point. And it worked.

How long it will go on working I am not sure. So I will post this now. And write more later, if I am still connected.

I am connected to the web again. But it may only be for ten minutes. Like last time. So here is the blog I wrote then. Will post it now. And then provide an update. If I am still online!!!

Monday 21 August 2007

Disconnected yet again.

Woke to another dawn in Dorset feeling at peace with the world again. Glanced at my computer modem, thought I saw the appropriate green light for I signalling that I was still connected to the internet. Started to write a blog in my head. The sun was dazzling me through the window beside my computer and brightening the white clouds in the mostly blue sky with just a few streaks of threatening black cloud. The sea, which I can now see from my typing chair thanks to Peter’s efforts in cutting back the bay hedge yesterday, is mostly a greyish blue.

There was no need to hurry because I had the whole day before me. So I cleared some of the books stacked below my writing desk. Most of them I put on the shelves. But some I happily chucked into the recycling box, like the vast Windows 95 Bible and Quark Express Step by Step. After making my second cup of tea I checked the phone. More bliss. I had a dialling tone. I switched on the computer. It seemed to boot up more quickly than usual. I called up Firefox and clicked on the bookmark for my blog: ‘Problem loading page’. Down on my knees to look at the modem. The I green light is out.

Picked up the telephone again and dialled my home number in London: ‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised.’ Dialled the main City University number; lot’s of crackling on the line but no connection. Switched on my mobile and dialled my number here in Charmouth. Nearly jumped out of my skin. The phone rang in the house. Before I could cancel the call I heard my youngest daughter jumped out of bed and answered the extension. Snarled when there was nobody there and stormed down the corridor to take her shower.

So BT has got me by the balls yet again. I cannot ring them on the line I am paying them for. They could ring me, if only they cared.

But they don’t.

Completed this blog at 8 AM Monday 21 August 2007. But still don’t know when I will be able to post it.

The first part of this blog was written last Tuesday, when I got up around dawn, unpacked a few boxes and settled down to write a blog. Then I stopped for breakfast. When I returned to my computer I was no longer connected to the internet. My tranquil mood was shattered as I rang first Sky then BT. Then my phone stopped working, so I spent the rest of the week using my mobile. I went into Lyme Regis to check my email. Still no reply to my email of complaint to BT. But by that time I was too tired to write a blog. When I ring my number in London the automated message says that I have dialled an incorrect number, although BT shut down my line in Roderick Road and transferred it to the flat in Savernake on the first of August.

It is too late at night to write a serious blog about this personal experience. Which it demands. Because I do not think my experience is unique. And BT is still the dominant supplier in UK and controls most of the landline telephone system. They have not connected my telephone at all in Savernake. And here in Charmouth, the phone has sometimes just been working for out-going calls and at other times working just for incoming calls. And when it works there is mostly interference which makes it difficult to hear what is being said. Getting something done about it drives you completely round the bend. Because you have to listen for hours to the automated message ‘We are very busy, etc, etc.’

Not only are BT failing to provide a decent service they are behaving with the utmost arrogance. Keeping customers hanging on. Not even employing sufficient people to apologise to customers for their disgraceful behaviour. Why is no-one writing articles for the newspapers about this? Why are there not questions in Parliament? Is it because people have got so used to BT taking advantage of its still great powers that they don’t think it is worth complaining. Virgin Mobile can provide effective competition for those customers who are able to get a cable line. But companies like Sky are dependent on BT to provide broadband via the telephone line. Which they are failing to do.

At this point I am posting this blog and the one I started on Tuesday. Because my broadband connection may be cut off yet again. If it isn’t I will continue later. Here follows Tuesday’s effort, when I broke off for breakfast in the middle of a sentence.

The dawn is breaking at my house in Charmouth. Through the side window by my computer the sun is casting a pink hue as it rises. Ahead grey clouds dominate but the hills by Chesil Beach are visible in dark outline. Clearly we are in for another mixed day like yesterday with the August sunshine interrupted frequently by squally showers. The last really good day was Monday. The forecast for the rest of the week was rain every day so I decided to abandon my efforts to get BT to connect my London telephone and my efforts to get the landlord to do something about the rather nasty problem we have in the Savernake Road flat, and go to Dorset a day earlier than planned.

Last Thursday my wife had a bath and I had a long refreshing shower. Life was good although I had failed to get my wife’s computer working because the keyboard, the mouse and the manual had ended up in Charmouth. But around teatime there was a knock on the door. Roger from the flat below was distraught. Water was cascading through his ceiling, he told us, just like it had in February, the last time this flat was occupied.

Alan, the plumber, who arrived on Friday morning, took off the panels from the bath. He found no sign of damp underneath. He filled the bath and ran the shower. All the water seemed to be going down the plug hole not through the floor. Alan is the kind of man who does not like to be defeated. So we trooped downstairs to Roger’s flat. He was on the telephone but he waved us in gesturing towards the damp patches clearly visible on the ceiling in his hall. Alan tapped around and found a hardboard fake wall. The leak must be behind this he announced. Roger promised to get his landlord to take it down so that the faulty pipes could be repaired.

By Monday morning nothing had happened and my wife, who likes to bath or shower every day, was getting distinctly annoyed. She proposed we go down to Charmouth, where we have four showers to choose from, none of which is any possible threat to the neighbours. This fitted in with my wish to get my scooter there without getting soaked.

By 10 AM I was togged up in my leathers raring to go. But the battery had run down. I called the RAC who told me they would be there in 90 minutes. I was at first irritated. But as I sat on the wall of the front garden a my old neighbour’s house in Roderick Road in baking sunshine I began to enjoy it. Neighbours walking down the street stopped to chat. The forced wait was giving me another chance to say goodbye again to the street where I have lived for thirty-one years.

By the time I got to the A303 the wind had got up and I had to struggle to keep the bike on a steady course. But the sun was still shining and I was on a high by the time I passed the stones at Stonehenge,

(What I was going on to write is so far away from my present mood I cannot continue it now.   I shall probably go to bed and have yet another go at BT tomorrow.)

It is about 7 AM and I am sitting at my laptop in the front room of the second floor flat in Savernake Road, quietly humming to myself. Manically happy. Just now a train rumbled past on the North London line. I stood up to get a better view. I can just see it in the gap between the houses opposite through the trees which block the view of Hampstead Heath beyond. The front garden opposite is a riot of colour with pink and white chrysanomens. To the right there is a poplar tree reaching up to second floor height and standing by its side a palm tree slightly higher. On my left, on our side, there is tree that reaches even higher to the attic floor above. It is covered with red berries. I am happy to be here, but even happier to know that in a day or two I am off to the house in Charmouth for a full two weeks. There it feels like being on a perpetual holiday, fulfilling my boyhood aspirations, when in the heart of the Black Country, I longed for a place by the sea. A place where I could walk along the cliffs and across the beach every day. And also do some useful work. My mood has changed radically since I awoke about three quarters of an hour ago. I had dreamt I was at the annual congress of the University and College Union, due to speak next, but with no notes and absolutely no memory of what I was going to say. That reminded me of my failures. Yesterday I was trying to help over the telephone a young woman who is under threat at the university, where she feels there is a conspiracy to get her out. Everyone is against her. They are refusing to accept her view of the problems which have arisen. I can see, that she, like me, has something of a mental health problem, though she is also able to do productive work for much of the time. I have so far failed to get her to see that she is making matters worse for herself by not acknowledging that some part of the problem arises from her own way of dealing with people. And that reminds me of my own failure with this blog, the main imperative of which was to show, via the manic depressive diary, just how it is to have a manic depressive temperament. In one sense I have been on a manic high, since my first stay in the B&B in Charmouth which I now own. Trying to fulfill a grandiose fantasy of having the best of both worlds, a house by the sea and a pad in London. The manic drive, fuelled by a need to stave off the depression and the fear of failure, leaves me little emotional space to really listen to the concerns of the other people around me. I should slow down but I am afraid that if I do, I will grind to a halt.In matters of human behavior it is almost impossible to be certain whether the problems you face are caused by what you do or by what the other people around you are doing. Which prompts me to jump about my other failure yesterday, which disgusts me. For the second day running I failed to get the television working properly. This time I did manage to get a picture, though a very fuzzy one, in time for Midsomer Murders on the main terrestrial ITV channel. The problem is something to do with the aerial. And I ought to be able to cope with aerials, because my father taught me the essential theory and mechanics when I was a boy. Despite that it might be my fault, because I crumpled the wire slightly while inserting it into the aerial plug. Or it might be that the house aerial which I am plugging into is not very good.The most sensible thing to do would be to cut off the plug and start again. But the manic itch is driving me towards the other cliffs I have to scale. I should first finish the two jobs I started yesterday. Dismantling the wardrobe still in the attic at my old house in Roderick Road, which my daughter wants. And taking down three light fittings there I want. All this I want to do before we go to Charmouth, because Alkan’s builders will be starting work on Roderick Road long before we come back. And my dream diary has reminded me that I drafted the change of address cards on the fourth of June, but I still have not sent them out. And I must also give BT some aggravation because they have still not connected the Savernake Road phone and Janet spent fourteen pounds on her mobile yesterday alerting friends in France to our new contact details.It is all too much. Perhaps I should have my breakfast and walk over the footbridge to the heath and spend the morning watching the trains go by.

And only myself to blame. My dream has become reality. I have condemned myself to hard work after managing to avoid it for most of my life. In my first five days in Charmouth I only managed to get to the beach once. And that was partly a social duty, accompanying my sister who had come over for the day to help us move in. I missed the drum majorettes at the Charmouth annual fair on Sunday. I never even got down to the High Street let alone had a drink at The George.

There were a few snatched moments on the terrace when I was filled with wonder at the ever changing seascape of Lyme Bay. On the first day Portland Bill was light brown in the sunshine. On the second it was a black outline on the horizon and the sea was dark and forbidding.

The norm was set by the removal men. Although we were up well before 7 AM on Thursday and had a traffic free drive from our friend’s house in Weymouth, the van was already there when we arrived just before 8 AM. The men were eager to start work, earn their bread and get back to the North London they love.

The ramp was down before we had got our suitcases in from the car. The men came running in with the first of the boxes demanding to be told where to put them. As if we knew. We had spent the previous evening re-thinking our plan as to which rooms to use for what. My vote to have our bedroom on the ground floor had met with a resolute veto. The attic it has to be. At least there is only one flight of stairs to climb, which is quite a change from the four flights in Roderick Road.

Despite all the voluminous literature we had read from removal firms and my lawyer instructing us how to make moving house pain-free we fouled up on the essentials. We had taken food and drink with us in the car but had failed to remember we needed cups and plates and knives and forks. A helpful neighbour over the road lent us five cups to make tea. But I hadn’t the nerve to ask them for knives and forks so we got through lunch by using our fingers.

By dinner time we had still only found one box labelled cutlery and that turned out to mother-in-law’s silverware. So we dined in the style of the posh folks at the top of the hill.

The removal men off-loaded the last box just before 3 PM. And I started work with the un-packing. Most of the rooms are now free of boxes. But the small room at the back my vendor called her Office, now renamed the Garden Room, is still piled floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. They were supposed to be just books. But somewhere buried amongst them must be the keyboard and the mouse for Janet’s computer which is here in the Savernake Road flat.

Another failure. Just as aggravating as my inglorious attempt to get the television working here last night. It was tuned to Telewest cable and to get it working on the aerial the onscreen instructions say you have to press a button marked STR. But the Telewest engineer who set it up must have disabled this button. I cannot get them on the phone because my mobile needs topping off and the BT engineers have still not got my Roderick Road number working here, although they turned it off an hour before the appointed hour of 1 PM last Wednesday.

But my worst failure was not being able to get online and write a blog from Charmouth. ‘View all wireless networks’ produced only two possibilities. One was security enabled. The other was deemed out of range.

Here in Savernake Road I have a choice of six. So this blog comes to you courtesy of a man or woman called linksys. One day I hope to discover the person behind the name and buy him or her a drink.

(Written on the first of August, , 2007)

The day of the great move was almost successful. The Scott’s removal van arrived at 7.30 AM and just managed to get into Roderick Road, which over-night is lined with cars plus several four by fours and one or two vans. One car was parked in the middle of the four bays, where parking had been suspended, but the men bumped it down the road, set up their ramp. All six of them, wearing their running shoes, moved into a choreographed routine. Running up and down stairs and up to the ramp, bearing the already packed boxes, paced by their leader. They seemed to move with incredible speed with pauses every hour or so for tea or coffee.

The leader had said he thought they could be away by 12.45 PM but he had not allowed sufficiently for the junk in the sheds and the pots and plants from the garden. Although our vendor had told us that we could leave a few things in the house if short of time, we decided to shift a few remnants in two car loads to the Savernake Road flat, so that it was 2.35 PM when we left. We hit some serious traffic on the M27. Holiday makers who were not in a hurry to get anywhere. It was 6.45 PM when we drove down the hill to Charmouth High St. By that time, the removal men, who had arrived three quarters of an hour earlier, had had enough for the day.

We were cheered by the bottle of champagne in the fridge left by our vendor but depressed by the fact that there was absolutely nothing to sleep on except bare floorboards and though we had some food with us in the car, we had no plates or knives and forks. The sun was still shining on Strongborough Hill so we sat on the terrace and drank in the view of Lyme Bay. And then decided the most sensible thing to do was to face the three quarters of an hour drive to our friends in Weymouth, and get up at 6.30 AM to complete the move on Day Two.