Tuesday 26 September 2023
I’ve been up for over two hours and not done anything I got up early to do. I’m still in Lewisham. Chris is in Scotland and, since yesterday afternoon, is without WiFi in the house, which also means no mobile phone capabilities. We do, fortunately, have a landline, albeit with party-line audio quality (or maybe that’s at least in part because we use a non-electric/battery phone, an old circular dial-up phone – yes, really, that vintage as it is the only viable phone to contend with possible power cuts, and it has already been used in just that situation). I feel far too involved in the WiFi issues considering I’m not there, but I do have full WiFi and phone access so it’s obviously easier for me to Google and make calls. The outdoor WiFi at the house does work still though, strangely, so he can get some WiFi in certain spots. Anyway, I’ve sort of been dealing with that. I’ve also had an engineer at the flat to check the sprinklers. Had a very interesting chat with him about sprinklers and fires and blocks of flats and I now know things I would like to have known when we first moved here about seven years ago.
I am still in Lewisham after my holiday because my mum is having an operation today and I wanted to be nearer. I’m – sorry, Chris – relieved not to be first-hand facing the issue of no WiFi. It matters less to me than Chris for work because what I’m doing at the moment does not require constant WiFi access. However, it is hard to concentrate and focus on other things when there’s something that needs sorting. Mind you, it’s hard to concentrate and focus on anything other than the WiFi issue even from here as Chris, understandably – ish – is keeping me updated via messages. I suppose by the time I post this in October it will all seem like a distant memory, the days when we had no WiFi. I really do hope so.
It would be significantly easier to deal with all this if it were a problem in London because we have an internet provider. As with almost everything that needs sorting, it is a lot more expensive, time-consuming and challenging when you live in the middle of nowhere in Scottish Borders.