Blue Tit 

After much comparing and researching, we finally fixed on a broadband supplier. Having experienced Virgin in the past, I crossed them off the list (it is my ambition never to use them again for anything after the mobile phone debacle) and BT/EE, who were are with now, are too expensive. We also crossed off the smaller providers, as you never know how good they will be, and that left us with three. In terms of cost, service and satisfaction they seemed pretty similar, but a quick look at local wireless networks seemed to show that Vodafone were the most popular.

So Julia called them up online using her phone and filled in all the copious forms which seem to be necessary these days. This was made more complicated by us currently having two addresses – one needing an internet connection and one still being our current billing address for bank cards etc. It was more than slightly annoying when, after pressing the button to send the documentation, it refused to accept it. Julia did it all again – same result. And again . . .

Pied Wagtail at Donna Nook nature reserve.

So next morning, she rang. She was on the phone over an hour giving them all the same details, because the system had crashed. But eventually, we got it all done, though it was, by this time, costing us £1 a month extra and the £130 shopping voucher had become a £75 credit. However, it was, at last, arranged.

Or so we thought.

A couple of days later we had a notice of cancellation. Julia rang to see what it was about and was told that it was an acknowledgement that we had cancelled the order. We said we hadn’t, they said we had, we said we hadn’t, they said we would have to reorder, so an hour later . . .

We are now waiting to see what happens. The router should arrive by courier this week, and they should be round to install it later in the week. However, they don’t install it themselves. The installation will be carried out by City Fibre, one of the providers we decided not to use.

Let’s see what happens.

Mistletoe from eBay

Pictures are from December 2018 – Clangers because we used them as Christmas decorations that year after their appearance in a local scarecrow festival, and the birds because I saw these two species today at various times.