Seems like just yesterday I was hanging upside-down from the arm of the sofa, reaching into the mass of cords behind our computer, to unplug and plug the phone cord.
Seems like only a day or two ago, I was tapping my foot, watching that little bar in the bottom right hand corner slowly fill up with blueness while a photo of my niece opened.
Seems like just a week ago I watched the Prince and the Muppets video on YouTube—all three minute and 37 seconds of it—in 7 second bites, over the course of three hours while it loaded, slowly, loaded.
But now, those days, those good ole days, when life was… slower, less hurried… are all gone now.
Now, it rush rush rush. Now if I want to know the weather, I don’t raise my eyes to look out the window. I don’t wait till seven minutes past the hour on the BBC radio. No, it comes to me one megabit per second, like a cat blinking its eyes.
Rush rush rush.
Yes, broadband has come to Howlips house. The good old days are gone.
And it only took two and half months for UKOnline customer service to get a number from us then we call them again then they escalate it and then they ignore it, then we call again and they give us another date (and blame it on British Telecom), then the date passes again, and then we call again, and I tell them that yes I am in fact Mr Colin Phillips and how dare they say I sound like a woman and they give us a new date and say there’s nothing they can do … the fault is with BT and the date comes and it goes and all that time Lane comes to visit and she goes and meanwhile the in-laws are here for 32 days and they are still here and all that and poor BT just can’t find the which cable goes where and what switch was it and they moved to WHERE? Down the street? What street again? What number? Now I’ve lost the cable again…
Ahh… broadband in the land of customer service-free, technologically-Victorian, whats-in-it-for-me London.
What ever happened to Encyclopaedia Britannica? 
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