08:48
Barcelona won the game last night. Classy stuff from the gifted Brazilian captain. He's as good as me, nearly. Few beers with the lads.
09:29
Eircom bummed out on broadband. In proper modern countries, it's a fundamental right for all citizens, like education and health care. Here, it's a "Go Fuck Your Self - you're on your own!" situation.
Let's try an alternative provider in the free market economy. Let me see here. . . like. . . Smart Telecom! There's one. The bozos at Eircom have no idea what's doing in this, the most modern economy. “When a customer asks for something, give it to them.” Yeah? "The customer is always right." Yeah? I can outflank you! Boom! See that? No? Hah! I'm going to "shop around".
10:12
Pat the Radio Hat is playful and demigod of the airwaves. When a wilful listener appertains to differ with our Host in point of fact, he refutes their remarks in detail, speaking down to them in person, to belittle them here, on the radio, in front of everybody, like he is picking dried snot out of his nose and rolling it between his fingers as his eye draws lazily across the wastepaper basket to aim.
10:52
Oop. Private Eye Pat has that horror story on about the Dublin sisters who dumped their mom's boyfriend's decapitated body in a suitcase in the Royal Canal after a party in their flat one night. Gin. Vodka. Music. Cider. Knives. They chopped his dick off. The head was never found. I can imagine the conversation the next morning. "Here, Sharon. You lost the head last noight, whah?"
11:00
Helmet at the ready. My desk and chair is due to drop in this hour here.
11:05
Smart Telecom inform me that Eircom have to provide the initial connection as they have no access to the "last loop". That little bottleneck is the sole property of Eircom. They say when Eircom gets around to installing the landline connection to call them back. Back where I didn't started.
11:48
Heavy sun in the city today. Temperatures high. Winds low. The drivers in their crane cabs sweating over all that they survey.
12:01
Voices carrying up as I travail from bums on the street outside my window. Four early birds just getting comfortable in Brown's loading bay there - not a good sign. Must be pay day in the dole because they're swilling their cans of cheap beer and dragging on their weedy rolled-up cigarettes. Kind of excited jabbering as the suds hit their mark. It's right across the narrow street from my front door. Ugh, I don't want to run the gauntlet of them drinking their sub-euro gutrot when the delivery guy shows. Age ranging from 21-35 going on 40-100. They're pissing in the corner. At least their backs are turned.
12:05
Them lousy bums with their cheap beer. Hey, what's that they're drinking? Tuborg? Balls. That's my beer. Six for seven euro. Champions’ League second-leg. Lads night in. Heaven in Dublin 7 and all that.
12:12
The chatter has died down. I glance out. Still there, they now appear to be bored and dumb. Eyes wilting towards the drab wall fortifying the brewery in the middle distance across the river. The day stretching out before them like they're standing on the surface of some inflating grey balloon.
12:22
The girl in Eircom with the clacking keyboard sounds says that my street doesn't exist. Politely, I explain that filthy and all as it is, overrun with lower forms of life and all, it does exist, I do exist and I'm in the North inner city of Dublin.
Oh no I don't.
Hinting at minimal IT credentials in my tone of voice, I suggest that perhaps her map or address? 'database' is at fault, as my street, short and all as it is, has been here in inner-city Dublin since the 1750s and I bought an apartment here over a year ago. There's a sharp volley of keyboard sounds. She forwards me forthwith.
12:25
You are telling me the order is nowhere? We are in exactly the same place we were 2 weeks ago? Can you tell me if it will be ordered at the end of this call?
- No. There's a connection charge of €29.99.
I heard that.
- We'll send you wifi.
I know that.
- I have to tell you as I haven't spoken to you before.
So you act if it's not your fault. You work for Eircom, right?
- This isn't a radio phone-in show. We have a seperate number for the complaints department.
I suppose they are busy?
- The number is 1800 200 481
12:27
More indeterminate contact with the Eircom answering-machine thing. The voice recognition software encourages me to raise my voice and speak like a robot. The voice recognition software isn't a bad robot, it just doesn't work, even with my best elocution spoken as loudly as is decent to intone. I can't imagine the human-machine-interface outcomes when some shepherd from the Mamturk mountains calls in with the bacon-and-cabbage melting in their throat.
When-I-am-speak-ing-like-a-ro-bot-I-become-frus-tra-ted, therefore speaking like an ANGRY robot. I feel trapped inside my own iron body. The voice recognition software demurs, then, changing tack, asks me a stupid question about ordering a phone book. I answer in a stupid, sarcastic voice. The software hangs up. BITCH!
12:31
May sun shines down upon his bum bum-cheeks. Brown wrap paper bottle. White back, red neck. His whistle as he hunkers the world above the window for to see.
Delays.
12:43
They really are trying to put me off in Complaints. Now, where will I begin?
Thank you for answering my call following this interminable delay.
Why did I have to order twice to no avail?
Why is there nobody to deal with me?
Having conversations with myself, you know?
12:44
They've cut the music. Following a pregnant pause, Robophone comes back on, dramatically revealing all that is know: "We're experiencing some delays."
12:55
That does it. For the first time in my entire life, I give up.
13:10
Call back to complain to the original crowd that I'm not able to complain to the complaints department. Mobile network sits down. Call is dropped. It's like a freaking conspiracy.
13:31
Fingal county engineer:
You might have no water. We've been having a bit of good weather and we don't think we can keep up the supply. There's the whole thing about people living on hills. People on hills may have no pressure. Yeah I blame people, the weather, the hills in Dublin and God who had a good idea in making me but is a bad god when he leaves us high and drive.
13:37
News update: Dublin's prosperous bridges are not scattered with the living corpses of the homeless, we are told. They are the horseless.
13:42
CALLER: The nurses’ union have no manners. I tell my kids to listen when someone is speaking.
15:15
Sitting in my power chair on my power desk. Emperor of my own ass and elbows only. 'No eating al desco' is the rule.
15:18
Have spent more than two and a half hours on the line so far this morning trying to get a straight answer from the poorly divested telecommunications monopoly about getting a line in for some basic broadband in the centre of the capital city of the most successful economy in Europe. Nothing.
15:25
"Free connection, free modem and two months free subscription. Terms and conditions apply."
15:28
Unbelievable. Cut off again.
15:52
"Super-fast Internet access?" ('via super-slow telephone access.')
16:13
After waiting for a further twenty minutes, now being told my call is important. Representative may be with me shortly. Now is 16:14 and for the seventeenth time in the past hour they offer me a free trial. OK, I'll take the trial. Now, pick up the phone.
16:15
PICK UP THE PHONE!
16:16
Please.
16:18
PLEEEEEEEEEASE!
16:20
Still holding. They only record the part of the call where we're talking, not the part where we're holding, for training purposes.
16:23
Not holding any longer. Think they cut me off again. Now wait a second, they've just changed the tone. Saying I might have to go online. O wait. I can't get online from here, as I've no accursed land-line. That's what this call on my mobile is about, after all. In order for, to get online. How long have I been holding now? At least an hour. My ear hurts. The whole side of my head is burning.
16:31
'Margaret.'
'Checking the phone line.'
'Not even through to...'
16:32
Absolutely unsustainable unimaginable uselessness. After hours of waiting and a one minute phone call, "There's nothing I can do, ring back tonight." Love you too.
16:34
I'll just have to try again. No place else to go. This is the basic monopolistic nightmare they warned us about in economics class in school. Lesson one. Page one. Paragraph one.
17:11
I'm sorry, I seem to have trouble understanding you. Are you calling about a telephone book?
- You're fucking thick, that's why.
Thank you for calling Eircom. You can also go online. Goodbye.
17:16
- When did you place the order?
Three weeks ago. I subsequently placed it again one week ago.
- OK. I'll check for you now.
Tick tick. Voices in the background, another customer is fobbed off 'Ring our other customer care number on mumumum. Claudia, I'll let you go, OK?'
Nothing. Hold the line, please. (She goes off line. Must be in a head scratching conference. Or sending a text to her mammy. Possible she just hung up on me.
17:21
- We can't do that until you have a line available. Technical mumbo jumbo. Blah.
Do you have a supervisor?
- Ah. Yes.
What's his name, please?
- Michael.
Could you put me through to Michael please?
MICHAEL: When it comes to conflicting information I suppose there's two truths. If the system comes up with no ports available, we'll do a provisional order. It's taken you've agreed to the service. We then send the email to the non customer-facing department.
How long does it take?
MICHAEL: I'm just answering regarding the conflicting information. When it comes to the reservation of ports, there's two main things. There are ports available but they may be on dormant lines. However that’s easier to do from a timeframe point of view we don't need to build any ports. If it's a case there is no ports available then we need to build new ports if you can understand from an Eircom point of view if there's a PSTN exchange line there's no point upgrading the whole exchange. What happens if there's no ports available, we'll do it in clumps of 1000 at a time and it automatically sends it off to a system and that’s why it takes time. What I'm going to do to you, I'll mail off to the department and try to get some further information and a timeframe. Mick, I'll call you back by close of play Monday.
Is line-rental being billed?
MICHAEL: Ah, no.
Will we have a quick double-check?
MICHAEL: Oh. Ah. Ok. No.
17:38
Jaknowarrimeayin?
18:31
I'm standing in line in my local post office on Parklife St for at least 10 minutes earlier today just to buy a single stamp. There are a couple of pram-pushers ahead of me collecting their meagres and paying off installments on their bills. Papers ripping, stamping, shuffling in the rhythm of the non-technological age. In one of the few signs of modernity, a swipe-card machine barfs out receipts.
The matronly post mistress gathers and stamps them. The only other sign that times have changed in forty years is the shield of armoured glass protecting the postal staff from shotgun deaths, and a single security camera to record just such an event were it ever to happen.
I am attempting a new self-control technique I just inspired for myself. About ninety seconds into my wait and just after I started toe-tapping, I took a conscious decision to not be impatient. The strategy is working well. So far.
Tum dee dum.
Traffic rumbling by outside sends vibrations in through the concrete floor of the shabby old lobby. An historical photograph depicting a turn-of-the-20th-century truck with iron rims from the Guinness brewery vibrates on the wall. Some Post Office awareness-campaign posters which I cannot even be bothered to read. Nothing else.
Standing there patiently, that urge to buy something kicks in. A dash of retail therapy. Unfortunatly, there's nothing to buy. A few crummy birthday cards sold at half the price of the inconvenience shop next door, that's it. I would have bought a pen. A notebook. I would have copped an envelope or some other stuff. Nothing. Nothing is for sale here. Except stamps.
Eventually, I face the tungsten. Horn-rimmed, the broad-set post mistress shuffles in her patterened blouse, peers at her file, not bothering to look up. I expect she will be with me in a moment.
My eyes wander over nothing much. I spy a biro fixed roughly to the counter with string and tape. Next to it, petition slips from the Postmaster's Union addressed to the Minister for Communications pleading to retain the social welfare payments contract for the Post Offices, and thereby keep the post offices' core business intact. It’s threatened to give the gig to the banks.
The petition claims that fat-cat banks are going to get the contract to deliver whatever dough there is to pensioners, sick people and the instinctively unemployed. It seems obvious to me that doing so would kill off the last vestiges of the original global high-speed network. The Victorian post office was how the British Empire reached out to people. (That, and troops.) Ballyhaunis and Bengal once were tied together under the aegis of the Royal Mail.
For personal reasons, I don't usually sign petitions. I fear that whatever cause I sign up to may be hijacked by blithering nincompoops at any moment. From closure of unclean industrial facilities to protests against the business of global warfare, signing petitions is banned in my book.
Not this time. This little-old-lady-who-sits-here's job is on the line. So is my ability to buy stamps. For once, I support the cause. A cause that isn't me. It seems like an open and shut case of sheer social necessity.
Standing here in an austere time capsule of life before rampant commercialism bled every cell dry, I feel positively nostalgic. Not for this kip. But because they close for lunch. For a quirky hour and fifteen minutes every day.
Once, not all that long ago, you would have to touch the leaf of your crop, feel the neck of your quarry as it pulsed its last in order to eat.
The smell of dead animal is gone forever, to the point where we would prefer if it was never living. Now from veal steaks to frozen pizza, the food of life is wrapped and canned, accessed through cellophane, clicks and PINs ensconsed behind unbreakable glass.
After stuffing my small parcel through the steel drawer, the postmistress goes to the weighing scales propped up on a wonky chair. While she's labouring with that, I take up a petition postcard, sign it and throw it in the shoebox. And then, breaking all rules about petitions, I do another one. And then, the longer it takes for her to take in my parcel, weigh it, check it up in the tables about postage, flip open her book, flip and rip out three different stamps, pull up her glasses, talk to herself in her midlands accent, the more of the petition cards I weight in with.
I keep signing petitions as she works, glad I'm not staring at the buttons of a machine. And she thanks me. So I sign another one, to thank her. For being there. And because it's free and easy to do.
19:19
Yenowarh-imeen.
Oi have no prop-blem wi' dah.
Yenowhar-imeen?
19:56
I have to leave now. Eircom sucks the big one.
