Across the pond

Left the house yesterday at 9.30 AM, ample time to do some necessary shopping and make my appointment with ear consultant in Gray’s Inn Road at 11 AM. Two 24 buses were waiting on the bus stand to transport me. And I only had to wait a minute or two before one of the drivers decided that the time had come for him to go. We sailed down Agincourt Road and down the hill on Malden Road. But as we approached Camden Town the rhythm changed to long stops punctuated by spells of crawling. There were five buses ahead of us as we waited to turn into Camden Road.

I began to fear that I would have no time to do my shopping at PC World on Tottenham Court Road and that even without stopping I might not get to the hospital in time. That thought fuelled my rising anger, because it reminded me of Sunday morning, when I had to wait 30 minutes at South End Green for a C11 to take me to Brent Cross, where I hoped to get the wireless router I needed to get the Virgin Media broadband which was installed on Friday up and running to my satisfaction.

The Pole Richard Branson had sent to install it told me that in order to get my wireless system working I would need to buy a different modem, in place of the one that he had installed, and that it would cost me only £30. The man at John Lewis begged to differ. He told me that what I needed was a wireless router that would cost me £45. I thought he was probably right, but I should check with Virgin or look elsewhere. By then there was no time for me to go to PC World at Staples Corner and be back home in time for my visitors. Nothing for it but to find another C11 and endure the 45 minute bone shaking ride back to Parliament Hill, gnashing my teeth in frustration.

Yesterday, on the 24 bus, the combination of these two experiences, had left me seething with rage and fury. Though all around me, the passengers were chatting happily to each other or to friends on their mobile phones. Nothing to be get worked up about surely.

I closed my eyes and tried some deep breathing. By the time I opened them we were passing the old Black Cat factory. The bus speeded up somewhat and we reached Euston Road at 10.25. I lept off the bus, negotiated the traffic lights and heavy west-east traffic and ran into PC World. It was empty and five assistants moved over to help. (The recession, or is it a depression, has arrived.) Within two minutes I had a Belkin 54 wireless router for just £24.45 and a Kensington Optical track ball to help me cope with my newly discovered Viking finger. Two small items, but both encased in plastic and in huge cardboard boxes.

Back across the Euston Road to the bus stop, where a number 30 glided in just as I arrived there. I was ten minutes early for my hospital appointment. I was in and out in an hour and twenty five minutes. When I came out, a 46 bus immediately appeared and took me back to South End Green in twenty minutes.

I plugged in the router to my wife’s desktop PC and to my utter amazement it worked first time. Quite as important I was able to go on, change the configuration slightly, and get my own email working on the desktop, for the first time since we sold our house and moved into the rented Savernake Road flat a year ago last August.

So overall not a bad day. I should have woken up this morning happy as a sandboy, thanking the Gods for making it all right in the end. Instead, I am growling with anger at the way big companies control so much of our lives.

I am not in the mood to bow down and worship Virgin Media, though my broadband is now working to my satisfaction. The engineer installed it by an ethernet cable connection to my laptop. On Saturday discovered that somehow this connection was draining the power from the laptop battery. So although it was connected to the mains, the battery was losing more power than it was getting from the mains. (Yes, I did check, and test that it worked normally, once I took out the ethernet connection.)

Additionally Virgin gave me substantial aggravation when I tried to claim my Virginmedia email address. This was because they ask new customers if they want to make Virgin Media their home page or if they want to add Virginmedia tabs to their top line. I wanted to say ‘No’ to both questions. Because I had cable broadband from Telewest, when it was taken over by Virgin Media a few years ago, and I hated all the advertising and sheer clutter of that opening screen. But when I said ‘no’ to both questions it gave me an error message. And instructed me, hilariously, that I should type in something fitting their rules, such as richardbranson, all lower case. (No, I am not kidding.) I finally got it working with my own home page, but at the cost of having two Virgin Media tabs as well, slowing things down, whenever I booted up.

Which all goes to show that Richard Branson is no virgin. But then neither is one of his chief competitors, BT, who yesterday wrote to me enclosing their final bill for £262.06. The letter concludes,

‘Thank you for using BT’

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been trying to get BT to connect their line in the rented flat in Savernake Road since June, 2007. Since then the line has been live only for two or three days (in September 2007) when it was connected to the number which a local businessman had held for several years. (He rang me up and told me).

BT has never replied to my complaints and request for a letter of apology and compensation of £50 to cover my mobile phone bills in trying to find someone at BT who would listen to, and act on my complaints. On two occasions, I have managed to get through to a BT person who agreed that they might be doing something wrong. The last occasion was five or six weeks ago, when that person promised me that her manager would call me back in two working days.

I am still awaiting their call. Although, as the ads tell is, they love to talk.