Have you noticed it too? We all used to have one of those days once in a while where nothing went right. Nowadays, it seems they are on the increase. Perhaps it’s a side effect of global warming… Any was I digress. Today was definitely one of those days!

Really, it all began last week when the company building our conservatory cut the glass too big for the roof and had to put in some temporary stuff. A senior manager arranged to visit today to measure up for the panels.  Then the shop delivering our new sofa, a modular affair, forgot half of it and arranged to deliver first thing Monday morning. We were up bright and early, but – you guessed it – no sofa. After many phone calls to the shop, warehouse and even head office it transpired that someone had loaded the van “backwards” as the driver put it and we would receive delivery about 5 pm! As we were working at that time we still have no sofa. They will deliver first thing tomorrow morning…. I think I have heard that somewhere before.

The conservatory man failed to show too. He was at a meeting and forgot the courtesy of phoning to cancel. He did not see what the problem was. That took many calls to sort out, too. He is coming first thing Thursday.

To cap it all we had to have an emergency plumber out as our new toilet cistern sprung a leak. The company that fitted the new bathroon seem to have been nothing but cowboys. what was discovered about their professional skills was quite frankly scary! I’m surprised everything hung together with no screws!

I am looking forward to tomorrow. Things must be due to improve!

Unless this is something to do with global warming after all….

How much the world has changed since I first began to take notice! I remember a cine film  my dad had of a computer – remember reel to reel projectors? (alas I show my age). It filled a sky scraper and maybe every country of the world would have one of their own by the year 2000! Now, at last count, we have at least two each in this household, (laptop and pc – not to mention PDAs, games consoles, smartphones and all the other silicone chips around the house!) It seems we can’t function without them. Even the cat has learned that she can make the mouse pointer move by sitting on the keyboard! She gives us endless fun when there’s nothing to watch on the hundreds of channels on our TV system. We used to use video and DVD, but they are just too much trouble now. When we get bored with the cat we can watch YouTube or Web TV or listen to napster. 

 And so it goes on. One way or another we seem to be in front of a screen for more and more hours a day. It’s as if we’re “in the home but not of it”. The Web is my window on the world. I can take it with me and browse in coffee shops, hotels and even on my mobile phone. It seems that the more I know about what is “out there” the less I seem to know about anything. Never mind. I find Google a good substitute for a poor memory. I can even find things I wrote years ago when I was on some soapbox or other. Less Selective than the brain, I suppose, and, embarrrassingly, more public.

Don’t get me wrong. I love it! My husband thinks of all this technology merely as tools, but me……… I have to know about all the latest gadgets and how they work, how many gigabytes here and mega Hz there. I can stand in a computer shop for hours wanting to talk to staff about the latest wi fi technology or some new gizmo whilst I see them approach younger male customers over and over again. I’m not quite a silver surfer yet, but definitely middle aged and female. Perhaps they don’t think I came in to buy? I have learned that the best course of action is to visit customer service as soon as I arrive and ask – as geekily as possible – for someone who knows about the latest computer chip technology or superfast internet or whatever. Then I get some real service!