Well the phone line and Broadband connection came back yesterday afternoon but not before I got very angry with Talk Talk. Why is it to get anything done you have to be very unpleasant indeed?
After being without telephone and internet for well over 48 hours I contacted Talk Talk and spoke to a call centre in India!!!! They informed me that I would receive an update on the situation within 72 hours. I told them in no uncertain terms that I expected whatever fault it was to be repaired by that afternoon and if they failed to do this they would be in breach of their contract with me for failing to provide the promised services and I wouldn't hesitate in moving to another provider. It seems to have done the trick as everything was back by mid afternoon.
Spent the afternoon at a workshop to discuss the future of Hethersett Memorial Playing Field and open spaces in our village. It was a good event with plenty of first class ideas. Problem is there is a big gap between theory and practice. It's okay to have a "vision" but people are needed to make things happen, people who are prepared to work and search out grants etc. Let's hope the workshop wasn't just a talking shop and that we see yet more improvements to the field on top of those already achieved. One big stumbling block has always been the pavilion which is just not fit for purpose in a village the size of Hethersett. It needs either a radical make-over or to be demolished and replaced with a genuinely eco friendly village community building. We have been talking about this for many years. In the past people have taken umbrage when we have criticised the dreadful building. At least now everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet and realises that the building should be condemned.
The workshop attracted over 20 enthusiastic people. One telling remark was made by a parish councillor who said that the village has a tremendous store of goodwill and a large number of people working tirelessly to improve things, set up new groups and generally work for the good of the community. Tonight I will be part of a football club group looking at putting together a presentation for the parish council on the importance of sport and football in the village. So plenty of work to prepare for that.
A few days ago I mentioned that I couldn't publish a large blog that I had written due to my Broadband going down. Now that it has been restored the blog is below. I thought it better that I tack it onto today's offering rather than restore it to its date setting which might lead to even more confusion (I'm talking about myself being confused and not you oh reader). So here it is.
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See you tomorrow.
After being without telephone and internet for well over 48 hours I contacted Talk Talk and spoke to a call centre in India!!!! They informed me that I would receive an update on the situation within 72 hours. I told them in no uncertain terms that I expected whatever fault it was to be repaired by that afternoon and if they failed to do this they would be in breach of their contract with me for failing to provide the promised services and I wouldn't hesitate in moving to another provider. It seems to have done the trick as everything was back by mid afternoon.
Spent the afternoon at a workshop to discuss the future of Hethersett Memorial Playing Field and open spaces in our village. It was a good event with plenty of first class ideas. Problem is there is a big gap between theory and practice. It's okay to have a "vision" but people are needed to make things happen, people who are prepared to work and search out grants etc. Let's hope the workshop wasn't just a talking shop and that we see yet more improvements to the field on top of those already achieved. One big stumbling block has always been the pavilion which is just not fit for purpose in a village the size of Hethersett. It needs either a radical make-over or to be demolished and replaced with a genuinely eco friendly village community building. We have been talking about this for many years. In the past people have taken umbrage when we have criticised the dreadful building. At least now everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet and realises that the building should be condemned.
The workshop attracted over 20 enthusiastic people. One telling remark was made by a parish councillor who said that the village has a tremendous store of goodwill and a large number of people working tirelessly to improve things, set up new groups and generally work for the good of the community. Tonight I will be part of a football club group looking at putting together a presentation for the parish council on the importance of sport and football in the village. So plenty of work to prepare for that.
A few days ago I mentioned that I couldn't publish a large blog that I had written due to my Broadband going down. Now that it has been restored the blog is below. I thought it better that I tack it onto today's offering rather than restore it to its date setting which might lead to even more confusion (I'm talking about myself being confused and not you oh reader). So here it is.
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I stand accused. Accused of over writing. Yesterday I checked on how many words this blog runs to now as we head towards the end of March. It now stands at 37,358 before today’s magnum opus!
That’s an average of just over 455 words a day. If I try really hard I can probably raise that to 500 a day which is quite frightening. Frightening to me for doing it and frightening for all those lovely people out there who brave reading my twitterings every day. The numbers seem to be on the increase. So if you are reading this, and of course if you aren’t this comment will be Pointless (yes I mentioned the show again) anyway, thank you so much.
Question is should I turn it all into a book at the end of the year and self publish on Amazon (could I handle the fame?). Now I really am running on and already today’s blog has amounted to 161 words and I have scarcely got started. Carry on like this and it will amount to 200,000 words by the end of the year
So what shall we talk about today? How about downloadable music for a start. I used to use three main internet sites to listen to music –all completely legal. Napster, for which I paid a monthly sum for unlimited listening and downloads to my MP3 player, Spotify for which I also paid a monthly sum to listen to music on my Sonos system and We7 for which I didn’t pay a fee but which of the three seemed to give a clearer sound.
I was happy with this arrangement. Then they started changing things. Spotify and We7 changed their user interfaces and became confusing, limiting the amount of music I could listen to and now Napster has been taken over by American company Rhapsody. Early signs are this won’t be the seamless transition that they are promising and a search of Rhapsody’s database shows there are numerous albums available on Napster that are not available on their service. So what happens to the albums I have from Napster on my portable player and will I still be able to download to my portable player anyway? A trawl of the Internet suggests that rather than a seamless change over as promised by the companies, things get difficult. For a start I have over 3,000 Napster tracks on my MP3 player and these have to be re-licences every month. It’s a simple task of just hooking them up through my computer to Napsetr to download the licence again. Now, however, that licence won’t exist so none of the tracks will play. So I am faced with having to get rid of them all and re-load them from Rhapsody, bearing in mind not all of them will be available. It sounds as if it could be a nightmare.
Which all brings me to two of my pet hates in life – 1/ Things changing for the sheer sake of change and 2/ Being told that a new system or idea is far better than the old despite the fact that the old worked and you were quite happy with it.
I call it supermarket syndrome. You know the idea. You regularly go to a supermarket or shop and get to know where things are. This makes you comfortable. So what do they do? They switch everything around so you can’t find anything. Rationale behind this is that you will buy additional things. Actually it doesn’t work that way. Most people are more inclined to shop elsewhere. I’m not saying that change is a bad thing. As somebody once pointed out if we didn’t have change over the centuries we would still be living in caves. But sometimes small change is just for the sake of it.
The we have the other scenario. Change is always heralded as a new dawn with services improving etc. We all know that isn’t true. The most galling is when they take away local services, move them to say a national call centre and then tell us it will provide a better more efficient service. Or when a company makes half its workforce redundant and then try to tell you its services will improve.
Perhaps you are getting the idea now how, with these views, I never really got on in business.
I just find this kind of marketing insulting. I fear that the music service I have been happy with – Napster – which works for me in all the places I want it to work will now deteriorate into something I do not want and which is nowhere near as efficient.
Yesterday whilst shopping in a local supermarket I saw Oliver Cromwell gin advertised which seems rather confusing. Wasn’t Cromwell a puritan who did his best to stop all celebrations at Christmas and shut down a number of Inns. Not sure he would have liked gin to be named after him – or maybe I’ve got that all wrong.
Last night I watched Top of the Pops Two on BBC Four. My only reason for so doing was to see the only TOTP appearance by my all time favourite rock group Barclay James Harvest who, according to their fanclub website, were miming. I say it was their only performance but really it was their only half performance because midway through Rock n Roll Star the music was faded out. So we had this ridiculous image of the band appearing to continue to play whilst the cameras zoomed back to presenter Tony Blackburn. Don’t wonder they never appeared again. Their lead guitarist John Lees is my favourite all time guitarist. Bet you’ve never even heard of him. Anyway if you want proof of that he’s playing Norwich UEA in October. Sadly he will be the only original member of Barclay James Harvest to be on the stage that night. He still plays under the name of John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest but there is another BJH run by original bassist Les Holroyd. The two just don’t get on. Sadly the other two original members Woolly Woolstenholme are no longer with us.
There that’s 1040 words which has already taken me well over the daily average!!!! See you tomorrow.
What a contrast. Twice a year I help deliver festive greetings cards from Hethersett and District Churches Together – one set for Christmas and one for Easter. We usually deliver to two or three rather long roads. At Christmas had to undertake the task wearing about six layers of clothes as it was –2. Yesterday it was more like 20 degrees and very warm indeed.
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See you tomorrow.
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