Tipping out, tripping up and going underground

For several days now I’ve been feeling guilty for ignoring my blog; yes, I’ve been busy, but not that busy. I’ve gardened, walked the dog, read books and even, once, a magazine for the over 50s. Take last night, for instance. I was going to come upstairs straight after supper and start composing. Instead I decided to see what’s on TV and 2 ½ hours and a whole 100 gram bar of chocolate later I finally switched it off. And got ready for bed instead of switching my computer on.

Talking of getting ready for bed: when I went to the loo the seat unexpectedly cracked under me and bit my bottom. I knew I shouldn’t have had that bar of chocolate. Whenever I use the upstairs bathroom now, and until we have a new seat, I have to be very careful. Perhaps we should get one of these elevated loo seats they advertise in the magazine for the over 50s. And while we’re at it, perhaps we should check out walk-in baths and showers, stair lifts, Zimmer frames, motorised scooters, beds and chairs that tip you out when you press a button on a cord. The magazine is full of good advice on expensive holidays, investment opportunities, retirement apartments and leisure activities. All interviews are with glamorous and famous people of a certain age, who lead interesting lives. The letter pages are written by smarmy, self-congratulatory pensioners in need of a friendly slap to remind them of the reality of a penurious and frail old age which is the lot of so many of the ancients.

At Friday’s poetry group meeting I was confronted with another side of reality: old people who find themselves not only hard up but also isolated and lonely because of an inability to cope with modern life. When Lorna first mentioned them I misunderstood and said something unfeeling and flippant like: 'well, hadn’t they better learn to live in today’s world?’  It turns out that this inability to cope is not self-inflicted as in unwilling to learn to use digital media and smart phones, but due to EHS, or electromagnetic-hypersensitivity.

We’ve both considered Lorna to be a bit of an eccentric - well, to tell the truth, a regular fruitcake in some respects - but it seems that many of her idiosyncrasies are due to the symptoms she experiences when exposed to mobile phones, for instance. One side of her bungalow is swathed in yellow draperies over walls and windows. It’s like swimming in a murky aquarium. She has a strict rule that no mobile phones are allowed inside. Once I forgot to leave mine outside and after no more than ten minutes she became restless and red in the face. “Someone has brought a mobile in,” she said. Naturally, I apologised and took it outside. When she uses her computer - only ever for a very short time and mainly for emails - she covers exposed skin in aluminium cooking foil.

EHS is not recognised by the medical establishment. Wikipedia says: The reported symptoms of EHS include headache, fatigue, stress, sleep disturbances, skin symptoms like prickling, burning sensations and rashes, pain and ache in muscles and many other health problems. Whatever their cause, EHS symptoms are a real and sometimes disabling problem for the affected person. However, there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to electromagnetic field exposure.

Lorna and the members of her self help group are often unable to go out at all 'because there are more and more masts around' she says, and she won’t visit anyone else’s house because most people have numerous digital gadgets. The other day she fell on her steep and stoney garden steps and hurt herself rather badly but she refuses to use ambulances, doctors and hospitals. “They’d kill me’, she says. 

As Happy As A Cow

in a meadow full of juicy clover.

That’s me.

A week ago I needed to check the internet consumption on my iPhone. Vodafone told me I was nearing my monthly limit and would have to pay extra for further use.  Investigation was needed. There’s this handy app called ‘My Vodafone’ but, somehow, I couldn’t download it. Vodafone promised to help. “You’re not fully registered”, the chap said. “You need to be fully registered first, before you can download the app”. 

Not fully registered? I’ve used the phone for nearly a year and paid the monthly bill by direct debit.

The chap accessed my phone (with my permission), fiddled and faddled, registered it and downloaded the app. “Fine,” I said, and “thank you very much.”

Very quickly I noticed that internet access had slowed down to almost a standstill. Mysteriously, my IP address had changed to an unrecognisable set of figures. More investigation. More Vodafone chaps. Three of them, in fact, each taking about an hour to tell me they couldn’t help. Over several days.

If you are anything like me you will know how I felt. Lost, injured and insulted, confused; like a patient coming round from an operation to find that the surgeon has forgotten a foreign object in her innards; furthermore, a surgeon who has no idea how to remove the instrument.

Then I thought I’ll ring Apple Inc. They’ll know. Three hours later the new iOS 8 was installed on my phone but the interloper IP address remained obstinate and immovable. Thanks for trying, kind and patient Tiger in Kentucky. I had a lovely time chatting with you throughout but, in the end, you had to refer me to Alex, iOS Senior Advisor, who took me through the whole process again; sadly, again without success.

Overnight I had an idea: switch off everything, disconnect all Apple gadgets as well as the router, leave the lot to stew for an hour and reconnect them all at the same time. As an amateur with a colourful imagination I thought the four of them could encourage each other to whoosh along the same wifi path and come up with a single address between them. Preferably the correct one.

It worked.

So what, you may say. We’ve all been there. This is boring.

But now comes the extra special bit, an instance of Customer Service which is pretty much unheard of in the UK.  A day later, Alex Tanner, the iOS Senior Advisor, rang all the way from Kentucky to find out if my internet access had been restored, and, if not, he was offering to get in touch with talktalk, my broadband company, himself.  I couldn’t even find a talktalk helpline!

Luckily, there was no longer any need. Instead, I asked Alex to help me install iOS 8 on my iPad, which he promptly did.

In the US you may be used to such service, as a UK citizen I am certainly not.

So, thank you once again, Tiger and Alex, all the way over there in Kentucky in the offices of the Apple helpline.

I am glad to say I am back in the Land of the Connected.