Roadworks Ahead!

We're back to the sound of merry pneumatic drills outside and 'Road Closed' signs all around Eaglestone. I knew that there was to be some work done because I had a notification through the door by the company doing the work. They are putting in fibre cable for broadband internet. It's being done all over Milton Keynes, so at last the whole place will have faster speeds for the internet. There are bright orange plastic fences up all along the road and weird symbols sprayed on the road surface, really mysterious, and I'm not entirely sure that they are related to the roadworks. I can't see how they manage to dig such narrow trenches to put the cable in, the machine must be quite clever to make such a narrow trench. All round the estate you can see the work has left signs of tarmac when they've dug the trench and then covered it in and they seem to have left a sort of tiny cover which no doubt has a connection if you wish to connect to this service. I still don't understand how the internet works and how, if most of it uses the existing telephone cables (owned and run  by BT and if you choose another provider, BT has to be contacted so an engineer can set up your connection before you can have access to the internet.) and are the ld fashioned metal cables, how can a fibre system not use any of the existing system of cables? They must join up somewhere or other. All to technical for my liking and I still don't see how you can have television programmes and films coming down a single cable and then people sending emails, using Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

I had to go out in the car earlier and the road was partially blocked by the roadworks further along the road, but it was possible to get through, although some bright spark has been thoughtful in parking their car in the way. By the way, why are there so many vehicles parked on the grass along the side of Golden Drive? Do they not realise that the weight of a car will eventually break up the surface and cause real damage? Or do some people never think of these things and just park wherever they like, regardless of the consequences?

Having said all this, the workmen don't start work until 8a.m., and don't make too much noise and they have managed to allow traffic to keep flowing and haven't (as yet) blocked the road up so that I can't get in and out with the car.

Lost Phone and More Rain

I had a phone call yesterday, Wednesday, But when I went to answer I could't find it. The landline phone is wireless and it has a base unit near the point where the line comes in and the handset sits in this unit. I usually return it to the base when a call ends, but for some reason it go separated, so when I went to answer I couldn't find the thing so the ringing came to an end. I hunted around  the lounge and the table where the unit sits and then realised that there was a button on the base unit which would find the handset if you pressed it, which I did and there was a 'peep' and the handset was discovered between the sofa and the armchair where I usually sit. So, panic over. No idea who it was who rang, but later I got a call from one of those computerised systems, saying it was BT and they were about to turn off my broadband. But, considering what happened a few weeks ago with my laptop being hacked, I doubt it was genuine. When they rang then and said they were from BT, no doubt this latest call was a scam of some sort, so I put the phone down very quickly.

The weather is as wet as ever. I just hope it improves soon. I want to go to the history festival in Campbell Park this weekend and if it continues to rain that's going to be washed out, unfortunately. Alfie didn't get his routine early-morning walk around Eaglestone Park. I'm not taking him out in pouring rain otherwise we're both going to come back soaked to the skin.

I've been to Sainsbury's this morning. They've moved everything around in there and it's annoying, to say the least. You get used to the layout and then on your next visit it's all been moved around. They know that the average shopper buys basics, such as milk, bread, potatoes, sugar, each shop and these are like points on a compass which you move between. They haven't been moved, I notice. In the personal care and pharmacy area everything is different. I just cannot find bath gel, how ever hard I look.

Friday morning. So, another week almost over. No sign that the rain is going to stop. I left off taking Alfie until I was sure it wasn't raining, or if it was, that it wasn't too heavy that we would get a soaking. After 7 o'clock I peered out of the bathroom window and couldn't see the stream that we usually get, running down the road in front of the house, so I made the decision to venture forth. Alfie is like a coiled spring, he doesn't relish being cooped up indoors.

The bird feeding station is suddenly alive with birds! As I write this and look out of the lounge window I can see at least 6 little birdies on it. I think they're some sort of tit, but not sure. Only problem is, a great fat pigeon insists on landing on the feeder and almost destroying the entire thing. It frightens off the birdies and then a loot of the food in one of the feeders gets knocked and the seeds fall out on the ground. I don't know how to prevent it coming and ruining things. I know what I'd like to do, but I don't think the neighbours would be happy. I might get a pea shooter and shoot it up the backside. Anyway, I took some photos of the birds on the feeder yesterday and uploaded them onto my Facebook profile if you want to have a look.

  

Birds on the bird feeding station

After some thought, I decided to upload a photograph onto this blog post, so here they are, tucking in to the grub in one of the feeders.

I've been out. I have to get flea and worming treatments for Alfie, so I drove over to the retail park at Rooksley. Pets At Home is one end of the parade of units and Smyth's Toys is the other. I walked the length of the parade, past Hobbycraft, one of Carol's favourite haunts as well as Next. A lady was arriving at the Costa's branch and she unlocked and then went inside, locking the door behind her. When I walked back past later I noticed a sign on the door, saying, 'closed due to technical problems, sorry for the inconvenience.' Don't ask me what the problem was, because I didn't know, but probably an electrical fault with some of the machinery they use, a fridge or one of the coffee machines. Not good for business, I'm certain. 

Pets At Home have a subscription service for the flea treatment, which means I will have the phial with the treatment in it delivered via post every month, which means I won't forget to treat Alfie every couple of months. Then I walked along the parade and went into Smyth's toy warehouse. Not actually a good idea, because I was surrounded by so many toys it was impossible to choose what I was after for grandson Eddie. I was after a bath toy, something for him to play with when he's having a bath. I couldn't resit many of the interactive toys, those that make a noise, dance around or otherwise have a button on them to get you to press and get the toy to dance, burp, sing, or make some sort of noise. Something that Alfie would love. So I fell for a  Grumble, which makes rude noises and does all sorts of strange things. If nothing else, it made me laugh, a d probably some other customers in the store!

Not Well and A Scam!

For the past couple of weeks I haven't been feeling what you would call 100%. I've had a really bad lower back pain. I can't really explain it, but at times I've been bent double the pain has been so bad. I've tried to endure it. I thought it would go away of it's own accord, but no, it comes back. If I sit for any lenght of time, such as watching television, when I go to stand up, then the pain comes back. It goes whenever I lie down in bed at night. It's not so bad in the morning and is fine when I go out with Alfie around Eaglestone Park. It got so bad this morning that I just had to get a doctor's appointment and try and get something to stop it, or at least, get the pain under control. I didn't really want to phone for an appointment, because it's such an effort, first getting through, which can take 45 minutes or so, then you have to explain to the receptionist what the problem is and then wait for a doctor to ring back to give you the time of your appointment. I was surprised that, when I got through, there was only one other person in the queue in front of me. So I was speaking to a receptionist and explaining things within minutes. Then it was around an hour before doctor rang. I got an appointment at 10.20. I got there in plenty of time. Surprisingly, there were very few other waiting patients. It wasn't long before I was called into the doctor's room and I was given a prescription for co-codamol and took it next door to the pharmacy, which I noticed was now called Peak Pharmacy, having been Cox and Robinson for all the time I've lived in Milton Keynes.

Later in the afternoon I had a telephone call from someone who said they worked for BT (British Telecom) to say they'd discovered that my computer had been hacked. It sounded so genuine. They always do. I told him that I didn't have my broadband through BT, but he disregarded this. They needed to check my computer wasn't violated and had to install a piece of software on my MacBook to clean off malware and check for viruses. Little did I realise that this whole thing in itself was a scam! I'm sorry folks, I fell for it. Later in the afternoon  I rang Apple and the helpful lady showed me how to download a piece of software that checks for malware and viruses and it definitely showed that my laptop was indeed infected and the offending software was removed. Not very pleasant to realise that I had been scammed. I have to admit it. It's so easy to fall for this sort of thing and I had to check my NatWest account to check they hadn't hacked into it but then, when I attempted to get into my Nationwide account I couldn't get into it on-line and had to ring the telephone number that came up on their website. They eventually managed to see that a quite considerable amount of money had been taken from my account, but they knew it had been taken in a scam and it has now been returned, thankfully. I will now have to have the MacBook cleaned and any remaining malicious software removed so I will go into Currys and get them to do this for me. I think I've learned from this whole horrible incident and will make sure in the future to ignore any similar telephone calls. If you read this, please be waring of such telephone calls and don't fall for their sales patter. Check that whoever it is, regardless if they say they're from such-and-such company, that they are genuine before you divulge anything, but never passwords, bank details or whatever sensitive data.

Saturday morning. I have been to Curry's and they didn't have a computer engineer available today to deal with the MacBook and clean out the computer, checking for any viruses and malware. They couldn't fit me in until Tuesday, so it's booked in and I have to take it to leave on Monday evening. It's paid for, so all I have to do is check it in on Monday and then wait over Tuesday to see whether they ring to give me any information. I really hope not because I want it back in good working order. I have Carol's MacBook I can use so I am still connected to the internet and the outside world. I'm not using the larger MacBook until it is back up and running. I did notice that Safari was working properly once the malware was removed, so it now makes me realise that it had been tampered with sometime ago by the hackers in an attempt to get me to use another browser. If nothing else, at least that problem has been resolved, but I wish it had been solved some other way.