Jan 18th

Day starts with much excitement as it’s revealed to be 8:45 and no one even up yet. Enter into conspiracy with kids to concoct excuses for school. Sure this never happened when I was a kid.
It’s a grey misty morning, but I have absolutely nothing to do today, so I dip into the woods again. It’s grimmer than the other day when the countryside was illuminated by the frosty morning sunshine. I trudge through the sludgy mud. Half way round I meet a young woman walking her dog and have her for company for twenty minutes, which helps time pass. I try walking quicker, even breaking into a jog at times and manage to get the time cut by twenty minutes. I’m sure it was easier than on Tuesday so hopefully something is being achieved.
Get home and ferry Sophie to school, go to the bank to pay in some cheques and then return to pick her up and take her to Flackwell for driving lesson. She’s doing very nicely, so I let her drive all the way along the road from Flackwell until we get to Marlow Hill. She is taken aback but I am sure enjoyed driving on the "real" road.
My legs are in turmoil following the walk, so I resign myself to some Internet drooling, when lo and behold the laptop won’t connect to the Internet. Switch off and on three times and it begins to look as if I may have to resort to the dreaded help lines.
Click onto the AO Hell sign on screen. Every fucking thing I click on tells me to connect tp the Internet to sort it out. I hate them already. Of course it would be so bloody difficult to put the number of their help line on the start up screen wouldn’t it? I go through their poxy useless help menu for half an hour. I have an idea! Type "phone" into the index.
Usefully the following menu pops up

"About ALL calendar
About Intellysinc for AOL
About the Address book
Syncing with your PDA
What if I forget my AOL password?"

Yes, fantastic, absolutely so fucking useful.

Eventually I find
" Contacting ALL member services"
and hey presto!!! The elusive phone number. I dial excitedly. The line is dead. Must be a mistake. I check and recheck, dial and redial. Nope it’s as dead as Michael Foot. This happened before and I search through my word processor and eventually discover I had saved the number last time I went through this fiasco.
Oddly, they are experiencing "higher call volumes than usual"
How fucking unusual to quote Billy Plummer. How comes the last 19 times I have called them they have been experiencing "higher call volumes than usual". When do you have to ring to encounter them experiencing normal call volumes?
I listen to Dusty Springfield, Desmond Dekker and about half a dozen old sixties favourites, occasionally interrupted by some disembodied bint reminding me about the benefits of resolving my problem by going to their website.
Has anyone ever killed after one of these calls?
Eventually a personable young guy with an inaudible name comes to my rescue. At least they have given up on making the poor sods pretend their name is "Jack" or "Steve" or "Hugh". He does his best but after 20 mins we are still not connecting and he confesses I need promotion to "Level 2 technical support"

First though, it’s a blast of Jimmy Cliff, and "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" Just as I am about to get groovin to the next hot hit, my level 2 man comes on the line!!!

I here the words "welcome to" there’s a click, and the dialling tone hums merrily in my lughole.
Does the Level Two man think "Hey that poor guy got cut off I better ring him back" ? Yeah, and Father Christmas brought me Nicole Kidman for Christmas.
What an utter bunch of cunts!!!!
H went out to get me a curry at 8. It arrives at 11:15 gaving been getting cold since ten when it was ordered. Words were use sparingly.