Time for updates!

Yes, I know. I came back and then disappeared again. Annoying, but hear me out ...

If you have been wondering whether Keith and I had suddenly been dropped down a hole or vanished from the face of the earth, you wouldn't be far off the mark, especially if you consider those possibilities in internet terms. Before our move, Keith had done lots of investigations and discovered a few useful bits of information:

•  BT could not provide a broadband service in our new area any where near comparable to our existing one.
• Therefore, instead of charging us for the remainder of our contract (£700) as they had initially threatened to do if we changed provider, they were forced to concede defeat and allow us to leave our contract with reasonably good grace.
• This meant we could change to Virgin for broadband and TV (we had already left Sky TV) and get a very reasonable deal.
• Our new house was already set up for Virgin, although the previous owner hadn't used it.

Virgin said we would need an engineer to get us set up as the equipment already there was not up to date, so we ordered the TV box, modem etc plus an engineer to get us up and running.

As the big day approached, Keith was constantly getting encouraging texts for Virgin, including three offers of £150 to let the engineer come earlier than the arranged date, which he regretfully had to decline as the house would not yet be ours.

Moving day arrived (with its own problems, for a later post) and the following day, July 1st we were expecting our package of goodies plus engineer ...

The equipment arrived, plus more encouraging texts about the engineer, who sadly didn't.

After much to-ing and fro-ing of phone calls, it finally transpired that no engineer was available until four days later, so internet-wise, we were indeed down a black hole, made all the worse by the fact that there was no landline and the mobile phone signal, which we had been led to believe on their website was good, was pretty well none existent. Apparently the local mast had gone down and attempts to access it for repair were scuppered as the farmer on whose land it was, refused to let anyone near it, so the company were having to take him to court. Yes I know, you couldn't make it up.

All of this, however, made it abundantly and infuriatingly clear how much we depend on the internet and mobile phone network these days. If we had had a decent mobile signal, we could at least have done some of what we needed to do with a temporary dongle. 

Anyway, as you may by now have guessed, we are here, safely delivered and tomorrow the story will continue - hopefully! (This photo shows the view from the front garden of our house).