Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
A voice from the wasteland of a broadband desert – no, three voices…
As readers of last week’s column will know, I’ve just been through a terrible period in my life – I was without a broadband internet connection for a whole week. Our internet provider told us we’d be without for six weeks, so it could’ve been worse, though it didn’t feel like it.
Call centre technicians took us through the usual cure-all for every IT problem (turn it off and on again). For once, it failed. There was clearly something very wrong indeed.
So we had to consider alternatives. After initially being advised to purchase a clever little device called a dongle to provide temporary internet connection, I (at the risk of turning this into a CarryOn- style column) shoved my dongle into the computer socket and found it to be hopelessly inadequate. I always suspected it might be.
So, dongle dabbling being a no-no, our only internet option was to use our mobile phones. I’ve never really understood my phone. I’ve only ever used it for receiving calls, unknowingly calling people from my pocket, and accidentally using predictive text to insult my customers.
I was quite surprised to discover just how clever my little pocket-enemy really is… or is supposed to be. For instance, I discovered that in “face active” mode, my phone can instantly light up and be ready to use the moment it detects my face looking at it. In reality every ceiling and wall must look exactly like my face, because the flipping thing’s never off.
However, phone internet connection proved surprisingly reliable and quick. I was impressed. I was even more impressed when I received a message from our phone provider informing us we’d quadrupled our monthly phone bills in two days.
Out of options, the only thing to do was go cold turkey. My wife, teenage daughter and I started doing alien things like chatting to each other and watching old movies together.
It’s been wonderful! I’d forgotten just how good some things are. It was particularly interesting watching movies for the first time since I was a kid, and realising I’d totally misunderstood them. For instance, I had no idea the song Beauty School Drop-out from Grease was about a trainee beautician – I thought she was just trying to be beautiful and sadly there was nothing anyone could do for her.
In fact, almost every movie I re-watched seemed to have very different plot lines to what I’d understood them to have. Either 1970s films were extremely complex, or I was extremely thick (as Grease could hardly be labelled “complex”, we must assume I was indeed, thick). Nothing much changes, does it…
The internet was finally restored earlier this week and we all have renewed online capability, but Lorraine and I have decided that we quite liked life without it. We’re watching a movie tonight.
I haven’t seen my daughter for two days, though…