The Daily Novel

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.