Dear Family and Friends, April 11
It’s been a busy two weeks as we settled into our new home and welcomed Barbara and Terry, my sister and brother-in-law, for a short stay over the past weekend.
The heating problem I reported two weeks ago was eventually fixed easily; it was apparently “just a loose wire” in the gas boiler. Quite why the plumber wasn’t capable of finding the loose wire on his first visit is beyond me given that he managed to isolate the problem in less than two minutes on his second visit. Perhaps it was because he figured he could earn a second call-out fee. Or perhaps he was just taking the piss out of us.
In retrospect, that problem was minor compared to what has quickly become a deep irritation with British call centres, specifically British Telecom (BT) and Vodafone. Obviously we needed BT for a home telephone line and broadband Internet access. The first problem related to a lack of knowledge and understanding about how the telephone line and broadband Internet access relate to each other in the UK. In SA, it’s one account; broadband access is part of your telephone bill. Here in the UK, on the other hand, they have somehow managed to separate these two services from one another. They are completely separate accounts with different account numbers. There is no unified billing. This is despite the fact that they enter your house on the same piece of cable. They also have different call centres, although there is only one call centre number. The one call centre is British and the other Indian depending on the first two letters of your account number. In my case, the telephone service is provided by “British” BT, and the broadband by “Indian” BT. I’m still waiting for the punch line.
I hit the first snag immediately in that I didn’t have our banking details with me when I first called to place the order. As such, I couldn’t place the order for broadband access because BT insists that this is paid for by direct debit. When I got home and called back with the correct details, I was told that, because the two orders weren’t placed at the same time, I couldn’t now place the order for the broadband Internet access until the telephone service had been installed. So I threw my toys out of the cot, and demanded to speak to a supervisor/manager otherwise I would take my business elsewhere. (You can actually do that here where there is a choice of telephone provider, as opposed to SA where you get Telkom, Telkom or Telkom.) So what they did was cancel the first order, and place the combined order again. We trundled along happily with this process until it got to our banking details for the direct debits. (I still hadn’t realised that I was opening two accounts. That came days later.) Our bank account is with HSBC in Jersey. The British part of BT happily accepted the Jersey account number and branch code (sort code for the Brits), while the Indian part of BT wouldn’t. At this point I must have mentioned something about looking for a different service provider, because they accepted the order without the direct debit that was allegedly non-negotiable. They promised to send me a manual/paper mandate form in the post which would arrive within a day or two. It took eight. Confounding the matter and confusing me was the fact that the paper communications from British BT were arriving in the letter box within a day or two.
The telephone service was activated within two days, while the broadband service took a week. BT gave me a free modem/wireless router, which they sent by courier, because I chose the top Internet package which allows unlimited downloads and top speeds. This was quite fortunate because I haven’t yet found my own modem/router which I assume is in one of the boxes with all our books which we haven’t opened yet. This new router also came with a complimentary IP phone which didn’t work because the service hadn’t been set up correctly. More, angrier telephone calls followed, hopping from continent to continent. Indian BT started with the proposition that it would take a week to set up the IP phone service; after some shouting, more demands to speak to supervisors, and threats of cancelling the service (which you can do in the UK without penalty within fourteen days of placing an order), they did it while I waited on the phone.
My problem with Vodafone was that neither I nor Michelle (in whose name I took out the contract) had received a telephone bill. I followed the same maddening process of calling a call centre which requires listeners to go through interminable lists of choices before you get to speak to a human. I figured out that you could get through to a person by pressing zero several times in quick succession. After being passed from person to person several times, it eventually emerged that we hadn’t received a bill because I had tried to register for online billing. I hadn’t completed the process because one needs information from the first paper bill to complete the registration. But because I had tried to register, the paper bill had been cancelled. How’s that for dumb? And nobody seems able or willing to help until you throw your toys out of the cot, which I inevitably did, and which saw the problem resolved immediately.
I have a theory that the call centres have a decibel meter on their phone lines, and the operators sit there and take the piss out of you until you hit just the right pitch. It certainly feels like it. It just takes so much time and effort for something that should be relatively straight forward.
Be that all as it may, I am very happy with our broadband Internet access. It really is blisteringly fast compared to what we’re used to. The BBC website has this device called the iPlayer where one is able to watch programmes again over the Internet for up to a week after they were originally broadcast on television. It’s quite seamless and one would hardly notice that it’s not a direct broadcast. Interestingly enough, the BBC News reported one morning that there is such demand for this replay service that the iPlayer is slowing down the Internet in the UK, and could well overwhelm the Internet infrastructure if the usage of the iPlayer continues growing at an exponential rate. I’m certainly one of those people adding to the weight. Above and beyond the iPlayer, it’s just as well that we signed up for the unlimited bandwidth service because my download habits must certainly be testing bandwidth capacity in the Warwick area.
The only problem now is that I am struggling to network our two computers. It was so simple in XP, but I’m really struggling to make the XP and Vista computer talk to one another. I have a suspicion that it is really Vista that isn’t up to scratch; it’s not like it’s unknown for Microsoft to release products before they’re really ready.
Anyway, enough of call centres and techno stuff.
We had the house looking acceptable enough for Barbara and Terry who arrived last Thursday evening. They must have wondered what they had let themselves in for when I was a touch over generous with the cayenne pepper in the Portuguese chicken dish I prepared that evening. It was a little hot.
Having passed that hurdle, we had a wonderful time with them. (See the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones). Lucia took Friday off and we went to Coventry in the morning to visit the bombed out remains of the old Cathedral and stroll around the new Cathedral right next door. For lunch, we went to a pub on the Grand Union Canal near Warwick, and strolled along to the Knowle locks afterwards where we watched a family of daytrippers start the process of moving up eight locks in their narrow boat. On Saturday we took them to the market at Wellesbourne, apparently the largest flea market in the UK. We hadn’t been to the market before and had no idea what to expect. As it turned out, it was entirely missable; just the usual Chinese knock-offs and other tat that one finds at such markets anywhere in the world. It’s just that this one was very big. We left shortly after it started raining and headed for the much more pleasant farmers market held every Saturday in Warwick’s main square. Later in the afternoon, after we had visited the dogs and cats, we took a stroll along the river walk into Leamington Spa. We bought some victuals at an Italian street market, and Terry and I went to the local Sony shop to check out the latest televisions and tech stuff while Lucia and Barbara tramped around charity shops hunting for bargains. We walked home along the canal which passes a stone’s throw from our front door.
We hadn’t really thought of what to do for Sunday given the dire weather warnings we had noted on TV. I was a bit confused when I woke up because I could see that there was a bright sky through our curtains. But when I flicked the curtain aside, I was greeted with a white winter wonderland. Everything was covered in three or four inches of snow, but the sky was bright blue with not a cloud in sight. This called for immediate action. Lucia went outside and built a snowman. (See pics at website.) Later we walked into Warwick through St Nicholas Park and enjoyed a breakfast of coffee and pastries at a favourite coffee shop. That was our day really. I can’t recall what else we did. On Monday, Lucia was back at work, and I took Barbara and Terry into Brimingham where we took in the sights of the city, visited the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (http://www.bmag.org.uk/ & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Museum_&_Art_Gallery), and went to a lunchtime organ concert at the Town Hall. Once again, I found the concert programme a bit obscure. It reminded me of an old Victor Borge joke: In the second act my left leg went to sleep; how I envied it. Afterwards, we went to lunch at All Bar One on the canals before heading home through the suburbs of Birmingham. I particularly wanted to show Barbara and Terry how attractive Edgbaston was, but I managed to get myself quite lost in the late afternoon traffic and eventually had to rely on the satnav to guide us home. In the evening Barbara and Terry treated us to a final dinner at a Turkish restaurant in Warwick which we had been wanting to try out. It was good; we’ll definitely be back. I finally took Barbara and Terry to Coventry airport in the early hours of Tuesday morning for their 6AM flight back to Portugal.
Today (Friday), I went to London to hand in Lucia’s application for a Portuguese Schengen multiple entry visa, only to discover that it isn’t done like that anymore. You have call a premium rate phone number to apply for an interview; you are then given a slot without much regard for the demands of your work or the fact that you may not even live in London. There is no website that explains this all to you, and the telephone number for the consulate simply rings unanswered. The red tape everywhere here can rather wear one down. Anyway, afterwards I walked through Mayfair and past Hyde Park corner to meet my friend Johan and join him for a pleasant lunch at a little bistro near his place of work in Belgravia. When we parted ways I walked all the way down Fulham Road to Chelsea Football Club’s grounds at Stamford Bridge. I thought I might be able to take a tour of the stadium - which I could have done if I was prepared to pay the £15 entry fee. I had a pleasant walk anyway noting several properties that I would consider buying if the lottery ever decided to shine on me.
Apart from visiting the zoo, I spent most of the rest of the week catching up with filing, doing accounts and domestic chores and generally doing the little bits doing the things you need to do before you can say: right, now I’m settled in. Things like changing addresses and other little bits. I’ve got the telephone and council tax in my name, and Lucia has the power & gas and water in her name. As I have noted before, these little bits of paper are vital to prove that you exist. There are some things in boxes in the garage that I would still like to find.
That’s it for now.
After reading an article in a new magazine about the tortured life of comedian and author Spike Milligan, Barbara asked me if I got the sign off “Love, light & peace” from Milligan. Exactly so.
So, as ever
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
