Friday 8 April 2011

Thurs 7 Apr - The battle for the Internet, and a few little scorpions


We were getting fairly desperate now for the Internet, which was showing absolutely no sign whatsoever of materialising.  Time to change tactic.  Enough " nicey, nicey, we know you're doing all you can and we're just visitors in this country rubbish", time to get in their face.  So we went over to Janet's office and became a bit of a nuisance.  Poor Janet, double whammy from the pair of us.  A complete pounding of questions, not taking any no for an answer or the usual "it's out of our hands".  We want it and we want it now. 

But, bloody hell, as we started to piece the facts together, a little glimmer of hope was starting to flicker and glow.  Oh my God, we may actually have Internet access all this time.  Sitting on Janet's desk was our new modem and newly created telephone number.  But you can't have it, she tried to tell us, it's the wrong one, Telecom need to swap it for a wireless router.  Don't care one jot, we have a live telephone line (established by dialling it) and a modem and we want it NOW.  We wrestled for the modem, and won.  KP ran out the door with it firmly under his arm, whilst I stayed behind in the office.

Half an hour later KP called to say it's working all but a few passcodes, does Janet have them in her office?  No she didn't have them and she's not going to get them.  If we get it wrong and mess it up it'll ruin everything and we'll be back to square one.  We must leave it to Telecom to install.  Not a chance.  We weren't stopping now.

Eventually, our relentless demands won, they closed the office and we all descended on KP at our house.  Before long, Bingo! we were on line!!!  Hoorah!  We were all absolutely ecstatic, if it wasn't still the morning I'm sure we'd be cracking open the champagne (if we had some, which we didn't).

After many hand shakes and grazies, they both left and we got on with our day.

The original plan this morning was to do a bit of work in Janet's office and then go climb.  Not having had any playtime for over a week now, we fancied treating ourselves to an afternoon on the crag but, even though euphoric over our success in battle, neither of us were in the cragging frame of mind.  There's always tomorrow.

So I returned to my veggie patch and KP his carpark.  I wielded a hoe and dibber for the afternoon and KP a sledge hammer.  KP's sledge hammer was joined a short while later by some rather thick industrial weight gloves.  

"Oh my God, there goes another one!" "They're huge!" "I wonder if they sting?" 

KP's "massive" scorpion
Amongst all the bricks KP was moving were a whole load of little black scorpions who showed their indignation by strutting around with their pincers and tail in the air.  KP was not amused. 

Many hours later of scorching sun and labour (and a few girlie squeals from the carpark area), we downed tools and stopped to admire each other's handiwork.  KP had got over his scorpion phobia and flattened a concrete dog kennel, chopped down an olive tree and practically covered all of our carpark with rubble!  Absolutely brilliant.  All it now needs is a lorry load of scalpings and we'll be well away.

The beginnings of a carpark
I, on the other hand, had a thoroughly pleasant afternoon breaking up the clods of earth, levelling my veggie patch and planting out my lettuces and tomatoes into neat little rows.  Very pretty.  I'm sure they'll all be eaten by slugs by the morning but, for now, they all looked just lovely.

The first of many.  Fodder for the slugs

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