Sunday morning in the Big Brother house

Sophie has just gone back to bed with a cup of tea. She’s now reading.

Bren is downstairs. He has just backed up many websites and internet databases. He’s now sipping his tea and wondering if he should call BT Vision’s helldesk.

Actually, it’s surprisingly difficult to keep everything in the third person.

Hello people! How are you all this fine and sunny grey and overcast Sunday morning?

I’ve updated the theme; what do you think? A little too fiery? A touch too dark? A bit too much ‘apocalypse nowish’?

Oh well.

Suck it and see. As the actress said to the Bishop.

I have just finished checking that the many websites and databases that I host for a variety of nice people have been correctly backed up and stored.

They have.

I am sipping a fantastic cup of tea made by the lovely Soph (who, even now at 9.35am, is Back In Bed Reading A Good Book), whilst I wonder whether I should trouble BT Vision’s helldesk to tell them about their product not working much.

It’s a busy day for a Sunday.

We have to produce a concept demo of a new show for a radio station. That’s all I can tell you about that for now.

I have a 2pm meeting in Oxford with an independent record label.

And this evening we are going to an Over 18s showing of Toy Story 3 – again, in Oxford.

There won’t be any porn or live sex, it’s not that kind of over 18s thing. It just means there won’t be any little darlings being intrusive all over the place.

And Twitter is currently down for maintenance.

Breakfast is definitely going to happen next. And maybe another cup of tea.

Ear, there’s a thing. Why do I say ‘cup of tea’ when I mean ‘mug of tea’?

Am I subconsciously displaying some kind of posh pretension,  by substituting the word ‘mug’ for the more middle-class ‘cup’?

I hope not!

I am to pretensions of posh what Ghengis Khan was to Emily Post’s notion of etiquette.

Here’s an interesting fact:

In the same year that General Custer was getting his barnet refashioned, in a very rudimentary style, at Little Big Horn, Tivadar Puskás was designing the first telephone exchange for Thomas Edison.

Amazing, isn’t it?

I mean, if George and the Native Americans could have held on to their differences for a little bit longer, they could have sorted things out over a conference call.

Right, my tummy is talking to me. Food is required.

Time passes…

Breakfast has been consumed, tea is being drunked, washing is ‘on’ and Soph is Back In Bed.

And I am on the phone to BT Vision.

Well, when I say I am ‘on the phone to BT Vision’, I mean I am in a queue – in to which a recorded announcement breaks, every not and then, to say thank you for holding and to say how busy they are and how wonderful I am but never the two shall meet.

Or something like that.

More time passes…

I am still in the queue. The same lady keeps breaking in to tell me my call will be answered as soon as possible.

I have been in this queue for ten minutes, so far.

There’s some Israeli apologist on the television who is trying to make the point that The World Is Too Critical Of Israel.

Disappointingly, no-one on the panel has thought to bring up the peculiarly-overlooked murder of civilians – in international waters – on ships bearing aid. What short memories some people have.

Meanwhile, I am still in the BT Vision queue. The lady tells me that my call Will Be Answered As Soon As Possible.

It has been seventeen minutes so far.

Time passes some more…

I am speaking to someone!

I have given him the long list of problems that have affected our BT Vision box over the last week.

And he appears not to understand.

He has gone off-line to perform some line diagnostics.

Why? The problem clearly is hardware related and nothing to do with the line. The shopping-list of problems should have told him this.

I shall wait some more, but at least this time I have Eine Kliene Nacht Musik coming down the line at me.

Time passes just a little more…

The guy came back to tell me that we have a broadband speed issue which is affecting our BT Vision service.

While he’s telling me this, I run a quick broadband speed-check which gives my current download speed as:

Frankly, I find it very confusing to be told that 7.01/Mbs is an insufficient broadband speed to support BT Vision.

And yes, we are actually having one of the common issues with our BT Vision box, as I’m on the phone to the guy, so this is real-time reporting on a real-time problem.

Anyway, after 34 minutes, the call ends in an ‘inconclusive but promising’ fashion. The guy at the BT Vision helldesk has said he will forward our problem on to their 2nd line support/technical team; they will contact me within 24 hours.

Now then, what shall I do next?