Just read my last post and sadly I didn’t get the story submitted to Molotov Cocktail because my connectivity went off for about the thousandth time in two weeks.
We’ve had no end of internet problems and BT have been absolutely useless.

George phoned them dozens of time when we were away in the Highlands, to no avail, then Nick spend 8 hours going through the same loop with customer services which always ended in them testing the line and cutting him off. We live in the sticks with hardly any mobile connectivity so every time they disconnected his call, he had to go back round the loop. On the fourth attempt, he begged them not to do it but they said they had to, and it took him about half an hour going through the same story with someone else at the call centre to get back to the place where they’d just cut him off from. It was like Groundhog day, all over again. They wouldn’t have it that it was the line and sent us three new routers during this stage of the proceedings, and to make matters worse, they kept insinuating it was somehow our fault. BT broadband really do have terrible customer service. Their whole approach seems to be to avoid having to do anything,  other send routers out. The whole process seems geared up to fob you off – not to solve your problems, so you go away and give up.
Of course this is a ridiculous tactic with us, because every one in our house can’t exist in the real world, we all have to be wired in. Nick and I both work from home,  and we have two teenagers. How we ever managed before t-interwebs I do not know. Grumpy Husband, who at least had reason to be grumpy over all this, and who did his very, very best to sort it out, reckons we’ve become too dependant. Too dependent, I screeched – of course we’ve become too dependent, the interweb’s given us the whole of the world’s knowledge at out fingertips, allowed us to communicate with almost everyone in the known universe. Of course we’ve become too dependant. Why wouldn’t we have become too dependant?
After he’d calmed me down, he said he said he thought it was a fair point.
To cut a very long and upsetting story short, after two weeks, they agreed to send out an engineer who said it was our switch box which was from the fifties. It was slowing everything down and knocking everything out. It worked for about three days before we had a power cut and everything went tits again. We’ve decided to have a new line put it so we’ve got a belt and braces approach. I’m doing the final year of my on-line MA come October and I need robust connectivity for that, but at least we have a plan.
Anyhoo, as I said at the beginning, about 3000 words ago, I missed the Molotov Cocktail deadline. Despite this, when the list of the winners was out last night,  I still felt disappointed not to be on it. I know, I’m bonkers. I’m also in possession of a totally weirdo flash fiction about gender equality and fake news, on a planet of intelligent spiders, (it was the prompt) which I need to find a venue for. This could be tricky. Going to have a re-read of it today and see of I can find a different strange zine that might want to provide it with a home.

Above it a picture of a pine-marten. I took it when we were on our holibobs. Five of them visited every evening.  It was such a privilege to be able to see them, and from the comfort of our own (rented) front room. I thought it might be an antidote to the annoying broadband. I think I’ve probably moaned enough, and at least I’m currently connected, and can post this.