The House Husband

Given that today we have lost our connection to the Internet, I thought it the perfect time to describe how we have been accessing it down here on the farm. Because the pigeonnaire is so far from the main house, someone has installed an extension power line for a wifi antenna. The plug at our end is inserted into a socket that seems to disappear into a garden wall. We feel that behind this wall is the actual Internet and we have the control.

The source of the Internet is this wall

Sadly we were very, very wrong. The owners left for Bordeaux this morning, telling us they wouldn’t be back until after we’ve left (on Wednesday). What they omitted telling us was that they were taking the Internet with them. Clearly it’s far too precious to be entrusted into our hands. We returned from our day out to find we’d been cut off from the world. I felt instantly devoid of all contact with humanity…beyond Mirinda, of course. I was very gloomy.

Our day, on the other hand, was lovely. Our usual late start saw us arrive in the 33% English populated bastide town of Eymet. Back home we watched a programme on the BBC about an area of France called Little England and it featured Eymet. One of the people in the programme is the woman who runs this shop.

Dog grooming, Dordogne style

Anyway, the town was lovely to walk around and memorable because it’s the only place we’ve heard someone shouting into a mobile phone and he turned out to be English. This is clearly an English phenomenon.

Eymet is one of the bastide towns that was built for aggression. It has a castle and once was walled. It was built by the French to keep out the English. I guess it took a few centuries but eventually the English have indeed managed to get in. And they were everywhere. We had pizza surrounded by them. It felt very odd. I don’t mind the occasional tourist (after all we are tourists ourselves) but a third of a town is a bit much. Also when you pass the English on the street, they don’t say Bonjour whereas the French almost always do.

So, leaving the English town of Eymet, we set off for a very small spot called Allemans du Dropt –Dropt being the river it is on. There is a small church in the middle of the village (dedicated to St Eutrope) which has the most amazing frescoes in it. I was particularly keen to see the depictions of hell because they are always so wonderfully graphic.

And these didn’t disappoint. The frescoes were painted in the 15th century but were not rediscovered until 1935. I assume they were whitewashed over or something. They are now in the process of being restored. Sadly some have been lost completely with no record of what they were. However, the ones that are still in evidence are wonderful.

Ignoring the Jesus stuff (only because it’s all a bit predictable and, therefore, dull) we move on to a wonderful image of St Michael having a right go at the devil. With massive golden lance, surmounted by a cross, he pierces the devil at his feet while gripping his horns. Behind him is an angel and two humans who have been saved from the fires of hell.

But brave St Michael has not been that successful. For to his right is a giant demon carrying a wicker basket full of humans, destined for the fiery pits. He looks back at the blonde haired Saint as if poking his tongue out at him (except he doesn’t appear to have a tongue). The humans in the basket don’t look that unhappy but the one human held by the hair by the devil is clearly in some distress as naked he prepares to receive a rather vicious looking spear from an equally out of sorts demon.

The next panel is clearly my favourite. It is hell itself. A big cauldron, full to the brim with humans, most of whom are looking a bit sad (although one in the front just looks comfortable, so maybe the water is still only tepid). The massive teeth and open mouth of what the church calls ‘Leviathan’ is to the extreme right with big demons depositing their loads into it.

To the left, at the very gates of hell, four demons are arriving with fresh humans. One carries two pierced by a sword, a second has one by the legs, carried over his shoulders like a sack of spuds, the third has a basket on his back with many little human heads poking out and the fourth appears to be pushing a human wheelbarrow…if you look very carefully.

It is all truly fantastic and I can easily imagine the locals on a Sunday being chastised by the priest who would point to the maws of the devil and shout that this was where they were all destined to end up if they didn’t eat fish on a Friday.

Mirinda admires the frescos

Mirinda thought they looked like cartoons and couldn’t really take them seriously. I never take them seriously anyway. However, they were excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed them. We then headed off to the Chateau de Duras.

This is an amazing chateau. It was a complete and utter mess after having been ransacked and left for dead after the French Revolution. Then, in the 1960s a group of people decided to give it a bit of a makeover but, rather than make it look all National Trust, they decided to leave all the rooms bare with boards explaining the rooms and what they were for. This gives a greater sense of freedom to the visitor who doesn’t feel ill at ease. It also means the visitor can takes photographs inside and out.

The chateau does have a couple of little gimmicks though. As you descend to the patisserie, a voice is heard warning you about what may lay downstairs. I was ahead of Mirinda and went through the secret door which appeared in the wall complete with creaking effect. I waited an age for her to appear but she never did. She was worried that she’d be stuck on the other side of the secret door and not understand how to get free again.

The highest point of the chateau is the tower. At the start is a warning – the staircase is very narrow and anyone with vertigo should not go onto the top of the tower. This slightly put Mirinda off but I went first, sending back warnings about what lay ahead. When I emerged from the extremely narrow staircase I immediately yelled down for her to stop following me.

The staircase is in the side of the tower and emerges by the edge. There is a small banister around the top of the tower but the operative word there is small. It came up to my knees. I am not generally afraid of heights but I started feeling a bit wobbly as I headed for the centre of the tower. The views were spectacular and were uninterrupted through 360°.

From the top of the chateau

I tried not to look as I descended the stairs.

Before heading back we popped into a small bar for a refreshing drink (or two). It was then back to Liorac and the dead Internet.

The Internet turned 20 today. Tim Berners-Lee (the patron saint of all things www) was on Breakfast talking about where it will all be in another 20 years. This, clearly, is an impossible question to answer.

If we look back 20 years, when the Internet first started invading our minds, who could have possibly imagined Web 2.0 technologies? OK, apart from Tim Berners-Lee…and a few wishful thinkers. And smartphone apps which are (nearly all) designed to use the web – without the Internet, smartphone apps wouldn’t exist. Actually, smartphones probably wouldn’t exist!

Actually, there is a whole array of things that wouldn’t exist. Online banking, shopping, sport results, Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Blip…a very big list! And, of course, the concept of The Cloud – a world where everything is managed on the Internet. An amazing business model where on-site storage becomes so 20th century.

Who would have thought, 20 years ago, that we would buy our music and books via the Internet? It’s what I do. Take it away and I’d be lost. I’d also not be getting so much work done at the Science Museum if I had to rely only on paper-based products.

So a big happy birthday from me!

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But in the garden…Rather than sweetpeas on both the obelisks, Mirinda decided black eyed Susans would look good in the hot border. They have started to flourish and, I think, look great against the blue. Here’s how they looked this morning.

Black Eyed Susans

And a very big day for the gladiolus! The blooms are starting to emerge. The photo is a bit closer today, showing them starting to creep towards the light. They are unbelievably red.

Gladiolus - day six

Mirinda is due home in about an hour after three weeks in Oz and two days on planes. I figure she’ll go straight to bed.

Yesterday I had to stay in from 1 to 6, waiting for the man from BT to come and upgrade our Internet connection to the new super fast model. When he did arrive he was more boy than man. He seemed to be very competent but he looked about 12. Seriously.

In the morning I’d purchased a wireless doorbell so I could happily work in the garden and still hear when he came to the door. He surprised me by calling on the phone to say when he’d be with me. The phone I would not have heard in the back garden and it was sheer luck that I was walking by the phone when he rang.

The morning in the garden was spent digging a new bed. I say new but actually it is an extension to the existing beds, joining the border by the back door to the hot border by skirting the holly tree. It was hard work but at least the weather was kind – just very windy. I managed about half of it and will finish (hopefully) today. I have a load of bricks arriving on Thursday for the mowing strip so that’s, more or less, my deadline.

Anyway, the BT guy was in and out in half an hour, assuring me everything was up and running and working fine. He told me he loved jobs like mine. He’d had one last week that took five hours. I think maybe he should have taken five hours doing ours!

Still, at first all was fine with the Internet connection. I changed the computers to recognise the new hub and there was a significant increase in speed, even on the PC upstairs which suffers from the lead flashing in the fireplace.

My first problem was apparent at around 6pm when I put the TV on while waiting for Nicktor to arrive – it was our first Nicktor night for ages. The Vision TV box refused to work. I rebooted it but this merely confirmed that it wasn’t going to do anything productive. I considered calling them straight away but with Nicktor due in 15 minutes, I figured I could live without it. The aerial still worked and we only watch DVDs so it wasn’t a major disaster.

But then, this morning, everything went Pete Tong. I picked up the phone to ring mum and dad and had no dial tone. The light on the Internet hub was orange (it should be blue) and the TV still didn’t work. I was effectively cut off from the civilised world.

It’s times like this that I think how lovely it would be living in a cave with a long beard and absolutely no reliance on any technology beyond a stone axe. This feeling never lasts very long because it suddenly occurs to me that I’d also have to give up beer, whisky and Nicktor Nights. And coffee. I then shiver and move on.

Of course, I still had my mobile so I wasn’t really cut off. And then the phone decided to make a come back. I quickly rang mum and dad and we had a lovely chat though I was a little concerned that the phone was suddenly cut out in the middle of a sentence. It didn’t but the Internet light was still orange when I left to go shopping.

Fortunately my Starbucks card means I get free wifi, which is where I typed and entered this post. Thank you, Starbucks.

The flat at Canary Wharf has been without the Internet this week. The hub is unable to make a connection though it keeps valiantly trying. After trying a solution over the phone with Mirinda, it was decided I’d go to the flat and call BT. That was yesterday before our lunch. It was not very effective and so I returned today. The flat is STILL without the Internet and will probably still be so until Monday.

Yesterday I rang BT. The first Indian chap was slightly helpful. After explaining everything to him (I told him the hub was working but couldn’t get a connection which, to me, indicated the problem was on their side) he took me through the usual turn off and on, decable/recable, try and access via the netbook, yadda, yadda, yadda before he decided it was probably a line problem. He tested the line and claimed it was fine.

He asked me if the hub was plugged into the main line or an extension. I told him I assumed it was the main point because it was in the main room, the other line being in the bedroom. He seemed satisfied with this. As a possible solution, he put me through to the telephone department. To my surprise the phone was answered by a non-Indian woman. She was extremely helpful – the fact that I could understand her clearly and succinctly was a big point in her favour) – but, sadly, couldn’t trace any problem via the telephone line. She sent me back to the main call centre which I can only assume is in Calcutta.

The next Indian chap I spoke to had no idea what my problem was so I went through everything again and he told me to do everything the first guy had already taken me through. When he asked me if the hub was plugged into the main point I asked him how I could tell the difference. Immediately he asked me if the point had two screws in it.

I’m not sure how else it could be attached to the wall (nails? glue, perhaps?) but I politely said yes. he then asked me if they were across the middle or down the bottom. I was stunned. Who the hell would invent a point which only screwed at the bottom…or the top for that matter? It would hardly be secure. Anyway, I only thought that and told him the point in the lounge had two screws across the centre. Satisfied, he told me this was the main point.

Eventually (we were on the phone for a good half hour) his best advice was to give it 24 hours and see if it righted itself. I was silent for a bit. I then asked him if BT broadband was controlled by happenstance but he didn’t understand me.

Speaking of which, he also told me to swap the ADSL filters for, what sounded like ‘automatic’ ones. I asked him what they were as I’d never heard of them. He then went to great lengths to explain to me what an ADSL filter was. I managed to stop him, explaining that I did, in fact, know what an ADSL filter was but had never heard of an ‘automatic’ one. He told me I should get some and swap them for the existing ones.

After a lot of exasperating queries about where I could obtain an ‘automatic’ ADSL filter, I suddenly realised he meant ‘alternate’ as in a different one. When the light dawned I said as much and suggested he use the word ‘different’ in future. He was then very confused. I can only think he hadn’t heard the word ‘different’ before and perhaps has no idea what a ‘different’ ADSL filter is.

I didn’t have long to argue with him about the 24 hour thing because I was meeting Mirinda for lunch so I told him BT has a cheek to charge for a non-existent Internet connection, which he also failed to understand, and telling him he hadn’t been very helpful, I hung up.

And so, this morning I set off, once more, for Canary Wharf. To think that only last week I was thinking how good it would be to have a couple of weeks not travelling up to town, given the repairs at the Science Museum.

I arrived at 11 and, checking that the hub was still struggling to come to terms with it’s failed relationship with a BT connection, rang them again. Of course, the Indian chap I spoke to tried to take me through everything again until I stopped him by explaining what had already transpired, to which he said “Yes, I can see on your account that you rang yesterday.” Why he didn’t mention that at the start, I do not know.

He was actually quite helpful though after every sentence he repeated the phrase “I am very sorry you are having a bad experience with BT today.” Not that I think he was reading this, or anything. After this call I took the BT Experience survey and it asks whether the operator I spoke to seemed concerned with my problem and wanted to try and fix it for me. Clearly this was a problem so they told the operators to sound more caring. It doesn’t really work if the operator keeps repeating exactly the same thing each time!

We did reach a solution of sorts. He told me he would get straight onto the technical department and get them to fix my problem. he would ring me back in five minutes. Which he did. He told me they would investigate and get back to me between 3 and 4 this afternoon. He took my mobile number after I said I’d be there but would need to go out and get some lunch.

Guess when the technical department rang? Yep, as soon as I left the building and entered a dead spot, they rang. They left a message because I didn’t answer due to having no signal. When I replayed the message it was unrecognisable as language, let alone English. I rang back on the number left by him. This number went through to a recorded message which said “You were called today by one of our technicians. Please ring the BT helpline.” Very helpful.

So, I rang them again. Another Indian chap who tried to go through everything again until I stopped him and said I’d received a message and was just wanting to know what it was because it was in some long dead language used by the Neanderthals. he didn’t understand the word ‘Neanderthals’ but said he’d check with the technical department. It was just gone 1pm and he said he’d call back by 2.

At 1:30 he rang to say that the technical department were unable to fix the problem and he’d send an engineer out. I sighed. We arranged for him to come out on Monday between 1 and 6. So, another trip to Canary Wharf is in the offing. It all rather reminded me of the problems we had at Christmas in Kawana Island.

By the way, the point in the bedroom also has two screws across the centre. So maybe they’re both the main one!

One bright point was the Tube train that announced at every station we stopped at that it wasn’t stopping at the next station because it was closed. None of them were.

Why is Queensland so backward? It seems that technology is a very difficult concept in this state. We are still without the Internet, with just a flashing red light teasing us with the infinite possibilities of life online.

I can accept not having a connection to the web when I’m floating down a river in France aboard a small boat. I can even accept it when I’m in an ancient cottage somewhere in the Vale of Severn. OK, I don’t like it but I can accept. Rank incompetence, however, I have a very difficult time accepting.

Moving house, while a pain, should be quite simple as far as utilities are concerned. Flick a switch here, take meter readings there, tell the post office where you’ll be living. Being a veteran of many moves, I prepare a list of everyone that needs to be informed and gradually work my way through the list. Obviously, the Internet is high on the list.

In Britain (the country that is usually regarded as backward when it comes to customer satisfaction and populated with a swathe of Victor Meldrew clones) the Internet tends to be changed when your BT (or other provider) account is moved. Very painless and (it seems) simple. For our last move, I just plugged the equipment in and, voila, I had the world at my fingertips.

I’m sure Telstra would say that it’s because it is Christmas and they are short staffed or that the rain and floods all along the east coast are hampering their essential work. That’s all fair enough and I accept that other people are having a very difficult time but they knew about this change two weeks ago when mum originally rang Telstra.

What happened then was the woman she spoke to, instead of just giving mum the existing number at the new place (which had an Internet connection) gave her a new one. She also promised the whole thing would be up and running when they moved in on the 21st.

I wish I knew her name. I’d be splashing it over the Internet (when eventually I get back on the Internet) saying how useless she is and how she needs some basic training in order to do her job properly. This was problem number one.

So mum and dad move in and the phone works fine but the Internet is non-existent. So mum rang again and spoke to some other woman in Adelaide who explained how the first woman had stuffed up, claiming she would fix it straight away and we would have the Internet on Christmas Eve.

It’s funny how we always trust these people because we assume they know what they’re doing. What tosh! We had no Internet on Christmas Eve. So mum rang again and this time a guy told her the second woman had forgotten to flick a switch for the ADSL (or something equally confusing) and now we’d not have a connection until Monday or Tuesday.

It’s Monday as I type this and we still have no connection.

The biggest problem is that we have no recourse. Because service providers force us to take out contracts rather than pay for services as we use them, they can do whatever they like. Mum and dad will still pay for the time they have been without the service they are paying for.

Imagine it was petrol. Each month you have to pay, up front for a fixed amount of petrol. Whether you use it or not. If your petrol station is closed for some reason and you can’t get any petrol, tough luck. You’ve already paid. The petrol company couldn’t give a toss. Sounds silly but it’s exactly the same. We pay in advance for services which we may not get and have no recourse. Sometimes I hate capitalism.

Rant over. For a bit.

Tonight I was lucky enough to enjoy my nephew’s famous lasagne. I’ve heard a lot about it. It has been praised far and wide. (Actually a guy stopped me in Caloundra High Street today and told me how good it was and I didn’t ask him anything.) Here’s a photo of it.

Feeding the 10,000

It was lovely and well worth the wait. It was also HUGE. Not wishing to dob anyone in but…someone didn’t finish their’s. Actually, three someones didn’t. Four, if you count the embryo.

Anyway, I had a lovely night at chez Chris & Chloe and was roundly stuffed with delicious food and quenched with Bob’s beer (cheers, Bob). A pity I didn’t get to see Michael & Emma again but hey ho, there you go. Apparently I try and avoid relatives too*.

I finished the night with a much appreciated nightcap at Trace & Bob’s, swapping horror alcohol related stories of excess. And dog dreaming.

I thought I’d include a shot of the happy parents to be. I’m not sure why Chloe is pointing at Chris’s forehead.

Chloe showing Chris where his brain is

* Just in case anyone finds that offensive…it’s a joke!

I spent most of today running test scripts against online databases for my dissertation. Truly dull.

And to cap it off, Nicktor is not coming over tonight. So I’ll have to run some more test scripts.

One light, however. A while ago I dropped an iPod Touch down a toilet and it stopped working – June 19, to be exact. After trying lots of ways to dry it and fix it I had almost given up when I decided to Google it. Apparently I’m not alone in my plight. Two suggestions I figured were worth a try. One involved putting the iPod in the oven at 50 degrees for an hour. This would be my last resort.

The other was simple. Leave it in the sun for a week. Don’t move it, don’t try and charge it, don’t even touch it. This one I tried. For a week it has sat on the dining table. Unmoved but, when it was sunny, bathed in sunlight. And today the week was up.

You have to remember this iPod has been completely dead; not a flicker of anything even remotely approaching life. As soon as I hit the power switch, it sprang back to life! It seems to be perfectly ok now. Astounding. I love the Internet. So much. Thank you, guys.