Broadband? We don't need no steeenkin' broadband...

... well, actually, I do; I know, it sounds sad and corny and unbelieveable geeky, but when you do most of this publishing lark in the evenings, catching up on e-mails and so forth, then lack of connectivity at home sort of curtails the whole enterprise.

Luckily, I have access in work but just don't tell the boss...

Wednesday night, the telephone network in the entire street just went dead - BT turned up the following morning, and fixed it, which was great but unfortunately there is no broadband.

Spent two hours last night, all in all, mostly listening to Something in the Air by Thunderclap Newman but eventually getting through to some bods from India: first lady said that my password was incorrect (though I just knew this wasn't the case); I rang back, and again Mr Newman serenaded me, then I spoke to a gentleman who gave me a number to ring to check for "outages" (no errors reported); then, at quarter to eight, I got through to another lady who gave me the correct settings for my router - typed these, but still nowt.

Despite telling them each time that two other people - my niece and cousin both on the same exchange but with different ISPs - also could not connect to the 'net (which would lead most to believe that possibly there was something wrong with the exchange?) they kept on saying that there was nothing wrong with the line, and it was my equipment...

So, tonight, no doubt I've got another trans-world telephone journey to undertake. Oh fucking joy, and I just know that by the time this situation is fixed, I'll be permenantly affected by Mr Thunderclap and start to convulse everytime I hear that song (which is a pity since it is a rather good tune).

Thank you Talktalk.

Still, caught up on some reading for Triquorum and now have nothing left to read - well, apart from the "second read" pile, but that should be a doddle, not to mention the handful of novellas and one or two novels that I've yet to make a decision on for Pendragon.