And God said, Let there be Broadband

After two weeks in our new flat without TV, internet, a kettle or a microwave, we were beginning to sympathise with the lifestyle of the Amish. And what’s more – we were quite enjoying it.

We spent our evenings reading and conversing (for those of you unfamiliar with these activities, please refer to the complete works of Jane Austen) and spent many a happy evening cultivating our friendships with fine beverages and good humour. But one evening when Suz began to read the dictionary and we decided it might be fun to take up knitting, the realisation dawned that perhaps we’d spent too long away from 21st century civilisation.

Which meant it was time to face the long postponed task of getting our phone line reconnected.

Now, Suz has endured many traumatic hours on the phone to various Eastern-based call centres in the past two years – including one incident when she was told repeatedly to open a particular web page for instructions on how to get our internet working again, and another when the very nice lady on the phone asked “Can I call you Susan?”. Understandably, she did not respond well to this, given that her name is Suzannah.

So with this in mind, and the fact that Em was leveraging her custom with o2 to get us a deal on broadband, I stepped up to the challenge and called BT.

As expected, it was an excruciating process, involving four different “customer service” operators (one of whom - a chirpy youth named Becky - very kindly cut me off), a rigorous (and I’m sure hugely unnecessary) credit check and one lengthy conversation in which I eventually explained to the charming elderly man on the phone that we already had a phone line which we would simply like reconnecting and therefore would not be needing another one.

After what seemed like two years of my life later, we got there. And in fact, we are due to go live at 8pm this evening. Might want to look out for another blog in the next couple of days...