Let’s be honest. The world just isn’t a very nice place anymore, is it? I know that’s a common proposition, but I feel my cliché is slightly less obvious. I’m not talking about international relations, or foreign policy, the war on Darwin, Islamic cavemen cutting off the clitorides of young girls and then sewing up their labia so that the grown men they are gifted to in wedlock may forcefully break them during the consummation of their marriage.

I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about something far worse, in fact. Have you ever considered the amount of stress you go through in one day in order to complete what should be the simplest of tasks?

Take this example from my life, for instance. Recently, I noticed that my Internet wasn’t working as expected. This being Britain, I obviously expected the usual dog shit Internet service we are forced to put up with, but recently standards were slipping, and the faecal tang of my current Internet experience was from a far less handsome creature.

Never let it be said that John Godwin is a friend of numbers, but the math in this equation was penetrable by even the densest of noggins. I, foolishly, in retrospect, conjectured that since my Internet was running intermittently, it would be wise to call o2, my service provider, and have them take grasp of the situation. Upon reaching the customer support team, and getting through to a very affable Scottish chap named Henry, a divine comedy of sorts ensued, in which each act added on a whole new layer of complexity, until eventually arriving at the juncture I sit poised at now. Eyeballing the phone with a finger cocked, a heartbeat away from involving United Nations.

Wait, that’s right, my phone doesn’t work and I don’t have any Internet, I forgot. Let me explain…
I spoke to Henry, the friendly Scot, and explained my predicament. He was as sympathetic as a man who didn’t want to listen to a moaning Brit could be, and his manner was, I must admit, rather engaging. Oh how we chatted! We danced merrily around the subject of dropped connections, line tests, which modem lights were what colour, and even what I got up to at the weekend (I was forced to attend a wedding by my Stalinist girlfriend, if you must know, but that’s another update).

Eventually, Henry hit a wall and informed me he could not assail this parapet until I had spoken to BT, as he wasn’t able to ascertain what the fault was, but was able to detect an unacceptable amount of interference on my line. I did my own tests, and indeed he was right – the earpiece sounded like centre spot at Rustenburg. He told me to give BT a call so that they could run some line tests, as they ultimately owned the line and were the only people who were able to call out engineers in the extreme event that I had a fault on my line.

On the surface, this sounds like a very reasonable request, but it presented some problems. Firstly, BT are morons. Not only are they morons, and I mean that in the dictionary sense, not the pejorative, but they are also – to put it mildly – scum. I knew that calling them would eventually lead to me adding yet another person to the list of people I plan to furiously stab in the event of martial law, and frankly, the amount of call centre staff on that list was getting out of hand. It was looking less like a death list and more like a temp sheet from Adecco. My useless brain failed to provide a contingency, so I was forced to call the dunderhead-ed clods who so ably rile my skittish blood pressure. I got through to the robot lady, and after 15 or so button presses, she asked for my full telephone number before informing me that this wasn’t BT’s problem because they didn’t own the number. Essentially, I’d just had a recorded voice tell me to fuck off. That’s when I remembered that I wasn’t even with BT, I’m with Sky Talk. Aaaaaaaaand breeeeeathhhhhhhh.

Don’t get me started on Sky. In the back of my mind, I had known all along that this would be Sky’s issue, but if there’s one company worse than BT, like fleeing the hell hole that is Milton Keynes for the greener pastures of 1940′s Birkenau, it’s Sky. My bruxism in full swing, I stabbed the touchscreen keypad of my iPhone with a crooked digit while tooth enamel fired from my mouth in all directions.

Robot lady answered. No I’m not calling about Sky’s “Award Winning Broadband”. Nor am I calling about the exciting world of HDTV. I’m calling to complain about your shocking fucking telephone service and the fact that you cozen me to the tune of twelve quid a month for a telephone that hasn’t worked properly since you installed it.

Actually, if I can change lanes for a minute, I just realised there is an extra element to this story. When I first moved into this apartment, some six months ago now, I did what every possessor of a Y chromosome does – I Immediately arranged for Sky TV to fleece me like the fucking bandits they are, in return for a bunch of channels I’d never watch, Top Gear repeats on Dave and poorly produced documentaries about Hitler and the never-before-seen footage that you’ve seen twenty-times-before. For the first few months, Sky and I were like flies in a pie. Oh how we dined! Have I Got News For You from 2003, midnight reruns of Family Guy, so many memories. Bad ones, actually, because this was costing me £600 a year.

Eventually, summer came, bringing with it the usual explosion of photosynthesis. Flowers bloomed, Ivy crept, leaves multiplied and new life sprouted into existence! Unfortunately for me, this entire phenomena seemed localised to the three square feet that surrounded my Sky Dish. The Dish being at the end of the garden owned by the parents of the Satan child I have alluded to in previous updates ensured an impossibility of any kind of personal intervention. Besides, the dish was set atop a ten foot brick wall and impossible to get to without a ladder.

I would have called them, but since they operate on a premium rate number, I was reticent to use my mobile.

“But John, you beautiful, humble genius, why didn’t you call from your land line?”

Good question; simple answer. It didn’t work. It hadn’t worked since Sky came to install it. The engineer, in his infinite knowledge, had decided that being able to actually use the telephone was completely overrated, and fixed the line so that I could hear people, but not speak back, essentially mirroring the same dynamic I share with my wonderful girlfriend. Hello honey!

A second engineer was called out to inspect the problem, and his claims at having fixed the line, I found out later, were vastly exaggerated. His presence in my home that afternoon cost me one hour and two cups of Earl Grey, but my phone situation remained the same, and the chance of ever carrying out a telephone conversation seemed ever more bleak.

So, you can probably understand my decision to just leave the Sky dish and it’s cursed jungle Bastille to the elements, rather than have to suffer another engineer arrive, urinate in my shoe, and tell me it’s raining.

But I digress. It was in this climate that I was currently navigating through the myriad options presented by Robot-Lady. Several button presses later, I arrived at the relevant department, the same department I would’ve arrived at with any other combination of button presses.

“John” answered. An open book if there ever was one, the first thing that struck me about “John” was that his name definitely wasn’t John. In dubious English with a distinct Indian lacquer, I doubted this mans credentials from the outset.

“Where is your office based, John”

“Wales, Sir”

I couldn’t be bothered to argue. I waited while he fumbled around his desk for the relevant English script and calmly went through the actions as he read them out to me. For the second time that day, I was put through the process of ritual intellectual humiliation. I pulled on leads, poked things in holes, gave further information regarding the colour of lights on the router, and did the same again with the other telephone sockets in the apartment. The process lasted over an hour. Bored to tears, defeated, I prayed for an aneurysm. Him or me, it didn’t matter, whatever ended this farce quicker.

As it turned out, I was being rather harsh on John. After putting me on hold for 15 minutes to run “tests”, he returned, telling me that he had raised the issue to the 2nd Line Support team. If just for the fact that it meant this part of the ordeal was at a close, I was elated at this respite. Not child-in-a-sweet-shop elated, more released-from-Russian-Gulag elated. I remained a man in flesh, but the spirit was weak and spongy, I feared many killings and street rampages would be meted before a full recovery could be made.
Before John let me go, he asked me to quickly run a test call to check the line once more. I let out an involuntary groan that reminded me of a clubbed seal and put the receiver to my ear. No interference! The vuvuzela’s that had occupied the earpiece for the last six months had vanished! I ran to my laptop to check my Internet, Lord! It was back to speed! I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know what John did, and truth me told, neither did John, but I thanked him profusely. Straying off the script, he probably didn’t understand a word I was saying, but everyone knows the international language of love, and I showered him with it.

I bid that wonderful man adieu and scurried back to my computer to browse the net at lightning speed. No dropped connections, no page-not-responding, no time outs, just delicious pornogr… I mean BBC IPlayer, and at full speed!

Coincidentally, o2 then called, and Henry, the urbane Scotsman, asked if I had spoken with Sky yet. I jubilantly informed him that the problem was entirely fixed, thanked him for his impeccable manner and exceptional service, and told him that the matter no longer required his attention. He wished me a good day, and I, likewise, then we parted. Maybe to never speak again. A single tear cut a path down my cheek coming to a rest at the corner of my trembling lip, er, what?

The felicity, however, was fleeting; twenty minutes later my Internet was dead. Dead as leotards with leg-warmers and big hair. No green lights. I went to my phone, still no interference, and now no dial tone. The entire line was completely dead.

Fuck you, John, fuck you.. I craved Henry’s embrace.

Shaking the rage, I refrained from packing my assassins suitcase and boarding the next flight to India, I mean Wales, and immediately called o2.

To cut a long story short, I explained the situation, and after a quick line test, they told me that the line was now completely dead and throwing up a flag at the exchange as being faulty. I would have to call Sky back..

..my world crashed.

There have been a few times in history when all men of fibre agree that hope is lost. When no single act of heroism, cunning, grit or moxie can restore a broken spirit. I cite Jesus atop Golgotha, he knew his time was up, his lambasting of God during his final moments on the cross is quoted in the book of Psalms. I imagine Napoleon was struck with a similar cynicism as he knelt broken before the feet of Wellington at Hougoumont after being soundly thrashed by the British/Prussian armies at the battle of Waterloo. I feel it’s no exaggeration, nor do I speak with a hint of arrogance when I say that having to make a second call to Sky was EXACTLY on the level of the two events just mentioned. If anything, it was even worse.
My feeble ivory-ticklers barely contained the strength to grip my phone, but enchanted with resolute steely Britishness, I soldiered on. At Robot-Lady’s request, I performed the staccato keypad finger dance with the grace of an old master. Mercifully, my call was answered quickly. A man of distinct Indian origin introduced himself as “James”, and I noted that his accent was slightly softer. Maybe he was a bit further east of “Wales”, say, Bristol.

I explained my situation for the fourth time that day, and I swore to Zeus, Allah and Ironman that if he asked me the colour of any lights, I was going to Derek Bird the sleepy town of Guildford as a prelude to the Guy Fawkes-ing of the nearest Sky call centre.

Savings the lives of hundreds, James told me that he was going to put me straight through to the 2nd line support team, as they were better equipped to help me with my problem. The good thing about 2nd line is that they are like 1st line, but with a key difference: This time it’s not an Indian man pretending to be an English man, it’s an English man pretending he gives the slightest, vaguest, steamiest shit about you or your meagre phone issues. With no provocation of any kind, James assured me that I would be on hold for no longer than 20 seconds as he bid me farewell and pressed the button, seamlessly swapping that now familiar Delhi twang with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cindy Lauper…

…twenty minutes later, the 80′s ballads abruptly ended with the distinct *click* of a call being cut off… Cindy just flatlined.

My apartment has no internet, no television, no telephone. Services that cost me a combined £940 per year.

Fuck you Sky, fuck you.

PS. Just kidding about the wedding, it was excellent!

In what is becoming a common theme with this blog, the update bears absolutely no relation to the picture. The picture in question is from the Thames Water pumping station that someone foolishly left unattended recently, allowing me to slip and snap this shot.

Ta Ta Chicas!

Related Posts

No related posts found