I was a bit rushed at the end last night and  forgot the title. Must do better, as my school reports used to say.

This morning the internet was off. It’s a minor irritation compared the the BT debacle in the shop but it’s still annoying to have to get ready to blog, then have to get up and go to another room to reconnect the internet.

I don’t think I’ve covered the BT debacle yet. That’s British Telecom for overseas readers – a widespread so-called provider of  telephone services in the UK. The best thing I can say about them is that they aren’t Virgin. BT are dire in many respects, but they are far better than Virgin. Far, far better. However, I won’t labour the point. Nor will I ever use a  Virgin telecommunication product ever again.

We booked BT to come and connect the new shop to phone and internet on the day we moved. It couldn’t be done in advance as it’s a transfer of number from one line to another. But it’s a very simple operation, so what could possibly go wrong?

Well, first of all they wrote to the flat above the shop cancelling the telephone contract and telling them they would be transferring our number to them. This caused consternation in the flat. It’s partly their fault for using the shop address as their flat address, but you’d have thought BT records would have identified phones properly (possibly using the phone number as a hint) …

At this point all my British readers are either hurling BT-related  abuse at the screen or laughing hysterically.

What happened, when we rang the day before, was that they denied all knowledge of the job and told us that it will be two more weeks before they can do it.

Under further questioning they admitted that they had booked the wrong phone for transfer, but they had cancelled it. We knew that.

They had correctly identified the phone after that and booked the job. We knew that.

What we didn’t know was that they had then cancelled it. Nobody knows why, though stupidity is the favourite suggestion.

The situation is this.

We have moved into the new shop. The handset from the phone works in the new shop, but we have to take it back to the old shop every night to charge it on the base station.

The internet works in one spot in the new shop. Unfortunately this isn’t where we set the computers up, so we’re currently working with an ancient laptop balanced on the counter.

As for the card machine – if you want to pay by card you have to go to the old shop, as it is connected to the old line.

This situation, which sounds like the script for a surreal comedy, is likely to persist for most of the next two weeks.

It’s lucky that we only moved two doors down.