NARROWBAND

I’ve been having a lot of problems with my broadband lately, so much so, in fact that it has almost sounded the death knell for these tiny tales from Lesser Blogfordshire. The little green light that has stayed so steadfastly and reassuringly “on’ during the last three and a half years has taken to transforming itself into a furiously blinking reddish orange, sometimes for hours at a time, and this means that my smooth running operation, sitting here as I do at the centre of the less than intricate web making up the network of my life, has been disrupted to a massive extent.

At the same time the telephones are crackling to the point at which helplines are barely decipherable, and the online “self help” software requires that you are able to get online in the first place to use it. Suddenly I am cut off from the world with only occasional moments of connectivity in which to grab whatever crumbs of data before being plunged into connectivity darkness again. Obviously I waste those bright shiny morsels of contact on trying to do the things I was trying to do, rather than anything that is actually useful, and as the unpredictable and frustrating plummet into computer blindness happens once more, I find myself wondering quite what it was that I really should have done with those few moments of enlightenment.

Somewhere in between the bouts of disconnectedness, I managed to do a broadband speed test which informed me that when it was actually running, my download speed was a staggering 0.1MB (of the 4.0 I’m paying through the nose for) and my upload speed was initially twice that but soon settled down to much the same number. Not only did this make it virtually impossible to continue with any of my less-than-massively sociable online activities (like adding a picture to my latest banalities or even publish them at all…) but more vitally, any and all contact with m’colleagues has become something of a problem that might prove to be professionally inconvenient. I’ve had to ask them to phone me to tell me if they’ve sent me an email, which does, I suppose, at least appeal to the part of me that appreciates some irony.

I rang my phone service provider who seems apparently to be based in Bangalore, Mumbai or the Philippines, to try to get a line test organised and they informed me that there was no problem on the line and so it must all be the fault of my own machines. I have been through the various jiggery-pokeries that they suggested between crackles, juggling and checking all the filters, the old I.T. standby of switching everything off and on again, and disconnecting my wireless and plugging in a wire, all of which made no difference whatsoever (as I suspected), and most of which I’d already tried anyway because I’m not that stupid, but which I did all over again because the disembodied voice halfway around the world told me to.

After things failed to resolve themselves with the phones, I tracked down another number and I then rang the broadband service number who was actually much more helpful, pointing out that my broadband was very slow and had been for at least 24 hours, which was, at least, some kind of confirmation that I wasn’t going mad. Strangely, his investigations reported that some kind of repair was “already in progress” because of my earlier call, despite the fact that I had been unreliably informed that there was “no problem” with the line.

Curious that.

Ah well, the weekend progressed and my levels of frustration grew. Many words didn’t get typed because my brain remained focused onto the connectivity issue and how I was going to resolve my work issue for Monday. Occasionally the blinking red and orange fury of the lamp on the hub would give way to a soothing green for a few minutes and I would leap into action only for it to cruelly cut out the moment I clicked on my Internet icon. Finally, I was able to get my “Hub Manager” to accept a new password that it seemed keen to have, despite me not having read any emails requesting one, and I was able to shut down the computer with the light still glowing green and tiptoe away, hoping not to jinx it.

Hopefully the green will continue and I’ll feel brave enough to try logging on again, and maybe, some time in the far, far distant future, you’ll be able to read these words and the world will be back to normal, but I’m really not holding my breath.

There are many things that might have conspired to quieten my voice and finally shut me out of the electronic life I lead, but a simple inability to “log on” was never really the one that I thought might actually succeed in silencing me. Isn’t it strange how it is the one thing that you never think of that is the one that gets you?

Oh yes, and it seems that part of my pension’s been screwed up by circumstances beyond my control too.

Sometimes I  really do wonder why I bother…