Tweet

A nuthatch this morning, up close and personal. Hopping around, poking around in the moss, on the next door roof. Maybe five yards away from the bedroom window from which I tweeted him. With the good manners not to fly off while I went to fetch my long-range glasses for proper inspection.

With the last sighting being just about exactly three years ago, as noticed at reference 1.

And while I am on, I shall moan about BT. They recently sent us a circular about replacing our landline with the Internet. To which end, I think I need the adaptor offered. I try the web address given; no such page. I try the BT website where I find the adaptor fine enough, but they want £20 for it, the circular having said for free. Try logging into my BT account - having dug the right password up out of a back room - to find nothing about ordering adaptors there. Free or otherwise. In the end, I am reduced to sending the message ADAPTOR to some five digit number. Which promptly warns me that I am going to be charged.

Perhaps I would have saved myself a lot of time & wear & tear by just stumping up the twenty quid and then sounding off in the boozer afterwards.

I then made the mistake of paying a rare visit to NS&I. Where their computer system was every bit as irritating as BT's - although it did get better as the sessions wore on and I got the hang of things a bit. And at least I was able to do my very modest bit of business.

Sessions because there are two customers - each with several accounts, every one with its own long number - and because they log you out pretty fast if you don't seem to be doing anything.

I then made the even worse mistake of trying to contact either the Department of Work & Pensions or Devon Social Services about a relative that the latter is looking after - and has done for many years. In the rare intervals between listening to rigmaroles from computer answering services in which I get to talk to a person, I fairly quickly get told that I need to ring some other number. And then, after not very many hops, I am back at the beginning again. And the websites offered seem to be no help at all. How someone with special needs - I have seen the jargon 'neurologically diverse' in this connection - trying to do this for him or herself gets on, I can't imagine. Presumably they don't. And then the people I am trying to talk to have the sauce to tell me not to shout at the long suffering - and no doubt badly paid - telephone operators! I should say that I have not shouted, but I can well see that one might.

PS 1: perhaps the AI chaps should come up with a specially crafted chatbot that I can shout at lots, with it making all sorts of humanoid responses. Perhaps bursting into tears itself or shouting back. Perhaps threatening to prosecute me or to stop my benefits. All recorded for training purposes, naturally.

PS 2: perhaps there are answering services which you pay for which offer real people. Perhaps hosted up north or in parts east. Perhaps along the lines of the seedy looking telephone sex services which used to be offered in the darker corners of the red tops.

PS 3: perhaps someone out there thought I needed to calm down by playing with a digger for a while. Digging a good hole or chopping a good log not being the thing any more.

PS 4: some time later: I now have a message from BT saying that they can't send me an adaptor because they don't recognise the telephone from which my message was sent. Which they wouldn't, it being an O2 phone. Current thinking is to sit back and wait. Let it all wash over us. I wonder if there was a charge?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/tweet.html.