St Swithin's Day

Thursday. 6.30 a.m. So, the wearing of face masking is no longer going to be compulsory! It will no longer be going to be a legal requirement in certain circumstances, for example, when you go shopping and in other enclosed spaces. I'm so glad about this! Wearing a confounded mask means that my glasses steam up and my face ends up like it's been in a sauna, breathing in my hot breath, and it can make me feel really sick and starts off my cough. You can't have a decent conversation with a piece of fabric across your face which makes communication very difficult. I think it's about being responsible for yourself and being able to make your own decisions. 

The Government is considering bringing in a tax on sugary and salty food products, such as chocolate bars, breakfast cereals, crisps, and other products. It might sound like a good idea in an attempt to reduce dietary-related medical problems, such as obesity, diabetes, stroke, and other illnesses. But there again it's the nanny state controlling people's lives. Just educate people to understand nutrition and what it's better to eat, for example, five pieces of fruit and vegetables a day, a lower intake of salt and sugar, more fibre, eat less fast food. Learn where food comes from, for example, how milk is produced and processed, what goes into fast foods, and other matters. Just start by relating science and domestic science, less reliance on academic results and more on practical matters.

So, it surprises me how the British people have just rolled over and let authoritarianism take complete control of their lives since the covid-19 pandemic began back in March 2020. Nobody has commented on how our lives have been overturned by some totally draconian legislation that takes power away from the individual and puts it in the hands of our politicians and in some cases those who have really no political power and aren't democratically elected. We're not supposed to leave our homes unless it's for 'essential' shopping, such as for food or a medical emergency, we're not meant to meet up in other people's homes unless it's our immediate 'bubble.' Does nobody question any of this? I can't believe how easily British life has been controlled, no dissent of any sort, or if there has been, it's immediately stamped on, disallowed, no mention in media, television, or print. I worry because think about how easily the German public allowed the Nazi party to infiltrate their society and prevent any form of disagreement with their legislation, how they closed down any form of dissent, and, again, total CONTROL?! It just goes to show how far we've gone, in a very short space of time, and all for the sake of our 'safety because of this confounded virus. It's a question 'you must' all for the sake of protecting the NHS, this great monolithic construct, which may be a good force in one respect, but is overwhelmed with bureaucracy, over-manning, poor management and become some sort of beneficent aunty who hands out freebies left right and centre, a bit like great aunt Freda arrives and we expect to get 6d for being a good boy or girl. Or a packet of sweeties or other presents.

Today is St Swithin's Day, which means that if it rains (according to legend.) then it's supposed to rain for forty days, and if it's warm and sunny, then there will be forty days of warm and sunny weather. So, let's see what happens if it rains, or whether we get forty days of warm and sunny weather.

So, the weather is bright and sunny! Does it need to stay this way for twenty-four hours for it to remain fine for the next forty days? Let's wait and see!

Later. 4.35 p.m. I'm working on the plot of the next section of my novel (or whatever it is. Not sure it's officially a novel.) I'm using the internet, which is a valuable source for such research, particularly as you have videos on YouTube and news reports, data such as statistics, locations, etc. Just great. I am building up a fair amount of information before I can do the actual writing, which is the easy part. The playwright is supposed to write his plays in around three weeks, but I suspect he has done preparation before he puts pen to paper, such as the plot, characters, and incidents which happen in each act and scene, so he can then sit down and do the actual writing. Well, considering he's written around 70 plays, he must know what he's up to. I don't think I could write a play because I find dialogue difficult and it's not easy making it convincing. I find prose far easier. The fact is when we talk we don't speak in neat sentences, and we certainly don't always wait for the other person we're talking to, to start speaking. There are overlaps, incomplete sentences, and so on, making dialogue used in plays very false. Natural speech doesn't have 'cues,' where you wait for the other person to finish before you begin, although to a great extent, to be polite, you do wait, but not always.

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.

Talk Talk Poor Internet Connection

My internet service provider is Talk Talk. We have had quite a few problems with the internet  We have a wi-fi connection. It seems to be fine for other internet-connected computers and gadgets, including Carol's iPod Touch and Daniel's laptop. The iMac has been set up in our bedroom, but the wi-fi signal seems to drop out several times over the course of the day. You have to turn off the Airport on the iMac, and then the actual modem which is downstairs in the lounge, so there's quite often a fair amount of running up and down stairs until the thing resolves itself, but then there can be absolutely no internet connection for a whole day. This has been going on for several months now, but I rang TalkTalk to try and get them to resolve things. There is a point where you have to do something about this sort of thing, so I rang their number and then had to go through quite a few  'menu options' before I managed to speak to a human. I was THEN put through to someone in the 'Technical Department' and they decided that they'd do a test of our line to see if they could detect a problem, because they told me that it wasn't the wi-fi which was causing the problems (but I personally doubt it.) We had to unscrew one of the telephone line boxes, the one in the hall, and then plug the 'splitter' in to the socket which was underneath the cover.
They had my mobile number, because the phone was cut off during this 'line test.' About half an hour later I got a phone call from TalkTalk to say that they'd tested the line and that there had been a poor connection or something somewhere or other and that it was now sorted. So we put the front panel back together and reconnected the splitter (the thing that splits the line into 'broadband internet and telephone, so they can be run together from the one telephone socket.) It seemed to work fine. But I have since found that the iMac upstairs didn't connect any better. Infact, it was just as confounded awkward as it was before the line test. I'm more than ever certain it has to be something to do with the wi-fi and I have since bought the computer downstairs and connected it direct into the modem instead of using the wi-fi. The internet connects quickly and there's no problem. So, to conclude, I reckon that it has to be the wi-fi that has been causing all the problems.

Internet Off-Line

We had problems with the internet, starting last Tuesday, when the modem/router got damaged. I had to ring TalkTalk (our internet service provider) to get a replacement. Have you ever had to deal with a company through it's call centre? I bet you have, and I bet it's been a really awful experience, having to listen to dreadful music when you're put on hold, and the droning voice of a woman who say 'your call is important to us.' The endless waiting, the patronising tone of the person who eventually answers. The ridiculous questions. The security checks. I could go on and on. And then, eventually,  getting through to some sort of menu and THEN having to make the decision on what key to press. Or to just 'hold' until 'one of our agents is free to speak to you.'

I eventually got through (after about three attempts. I almost lost the will to live, or to throw the phone out of the window . . .) I had to go through a load of nonsense to find out what was wrong with the router, at one point having to stick a sharp point in a hole in the back of the thing. I used a ball-point pen. It didn't get the thing to work, as you would imagine. I was then passed on to another person, and each time this happened I had to go through all the security rigmarole. They decided that the old router wasn't going to work so they'd have to send us a new one. This arrived yesterday, when I went into Central Milton Keynes yesterday morning. There was a  card from the Post Office stuck through the door when I got home to say that they couldn't put the parcel through the letterbox as it was too big (and thank goodness they didn't as it would most likely have broken the router.) and if I went to the sorting office after three hours I could collect it.

Anyway, it took most of the evening to set up the new router (a considerably smaller and less complicated gadget compared to the old one.) and get the internet working again as we couldn't work out which password and username was which, as the broadband had one and the connection between the iMac and the router had another.

On a different matter, but still with TalkTalk. You have to pay your monthly bill by direct debit. By the time this is due there is never enough money in the bank account to actually cover the bill, so this gets returned to TalkTalk (as it would with any company who you pay your bills with.) As a result the amount we owed got into arrears. I rang up last week and payed the outstanding bill using my debit card, a simple enough task. But the whole idea of setting up a direct debit, you would have thought, was that it's an easier, simpler means of paying your bill, as you can just forget it and the company gets it's payment without any fuss. Further to this, you tell them when you want the money to come out of your account, usually at the time when you have money going IN to the account, so that the direct debits are covered. Well, this is what I tried to explain to the person I spoke to at TalkTalk. They told me that it wasn't possible to change the day that the money came out of our account. I said that virtually all the other companies we pay our bills to by direct debit allowed us to set up the day they are paid. But TalkTalk won't play ball over this issue. I said that they were totally inflexible. I will have to wait for them to phone up so each monthly bill can be paid by debit card. I'd just like to know if other people find this a really annoying business and totally inflexible. There must be  a few as I'd expect them to have quite a lot of customers.

Anyway, all this to explain why I havent' managed to post anything to this blog for a week.