Tuesday 2 May 2017

Drug running from Colombia

would seem to be a bigger problem than our problems of yesterday. This morning the paper is full of yet another, "I am innocent" story of someone who has been caught with kilos of cocaine in their luggage.
Perhaps she is innocent. The law assumes that. It's always possible.  It might be that she is "just naive" - and yes, a lot of drug mules are. They certainly don't intend to get caught.
We didn't get caught doing anything yesterday but we caught  our internet provider out. I am not a happy cat. The Senior Cat is upset and growling like a tiger defending his tribe. Middle Cat used language she hasn't been heard to use in years. 
We switched, as everyone will need to do eventually, to the NBN. Our telephone service went with it. The Senior Cat's alarm pendant relies on a mobile network so it should not have been affected but.... we still need the telephone service for  safety and security. All this comes about because, unlike most households, we don't have a car. The Senior Cat no longer has a licence. He gave it up about ten years ago. He hated driving and decided to give it up before he had an accident. That was all very well but I don't drive either. I never managed to learn and was advised against trying to do so. 
All this means I can't just "hop in the car" and go somewhere or take the Senior Cat to a medical appointment or - more importantly -  rush him to hospital. It's why we have the emergency pendant for him. The emergency pendant is checked periodically through the phone line. It is essential to have a working phone line. We can still press the emergency button and it will go to a different network but it means that they can't check. We don't want them sending an ambulance unnecessarily. 
We couldn't get the phone line to work. They had transferred it to the new system. They had sent an email telling me what to do but you had to log into the ISP number...and nothing at all could get me to the ISP number they had given me. It refused to load. Middle Cat arrived and tried phoning them...the help line said that help was over an hour away. Leave a number and we will ring you back the automated system told her. She left the Senior Cat's mobile number and the phone with me and went off to the chemist for more antibiotics for him. I had a far from well Senior Cat and a growing pile of work and... well, don't ask.
It took almost two hours for the provider to respond - and the response was that they could do nothing at their end. We just had to wait to get through to the ISP number. Middle Cat was back by then and had taken charge again - being rather better at technological problems than I am. She blew up. I sat down and wrote them a blistering email through tears. There have been some other stresses lately and this was too much to handle.
Middle Cat rang her partner. He said, "Go and get another cable. We can patch things I think."  
My BIL prowled in just after 6pm - early for him. He often doesn't get home until well after 7pm on a work night. He did things. We have a phone line that works. The set up is awkward but it works. 
All this though could have been avoided if our ISP people had been honest about how all this needed to be done. They should, at very least, have asked where the phone points in the house were located. It is surely a basic question?
We now need to call in an electrician to run a cable to the safe access point for the Senior Cat - beside his bed.
My BP might have dropped a point this morning but I am tired. I just keep trying to tell myself I am not in a Colombian jail having been caught running drugs. That would be far worse.

2 comments:

hd said...

Still no excuse for them risking health and safety

catdownunder said...

True - and, for that reason, I intend to take the matter further.