Awake and online

I still feel tired but am more alert, which is an amazing thing for me at the moment. Really, amazing. I am beginning to recall what it's like to feel normal again. Mmm. It is a beautiful spring day, dreamy, and I can appreciate it for the first time in ages. The tablet side-effects are alarming but I don't appear to have any (touch wood etc). I am definitely sleeping for longer periods and, when I do wake, I don't stay awake for four hours any longer. But, typical me, I'm wondering what happens when I come off them. Hopefully, my body clock will have re-set so that I don't need any help. I shall ask my sleep guru doctor to assure me about this.

I've never worked so hard in all my life due to tiredness and the demands that have been placed on me this year. I try not to let it show but it does at times, and when it does, I don't care too much. If I appear grumpy, so what? I'm sodding well unwell and where other people would take to their beds, I bloody don't. If I tell the cretin at BT that her company has 'fucked up my phone', and that I am 'fucking sick of it', it is fair, frankly, no matter how much they whinge at the other end. I am fed up with being polite and nice and being patronised by a) BT b) commissioning editors and c) estate agents.

I should probably explain a) and c) a little more. The first – well, where do I start? To cut a long, tedious story short, the morons at BT decided to cut me off (while fixing GFG's new phone line) so I had no phone and internet, and, despite my pleading, and their numerous empty promises, it took them five days to fix it (even though the problem was due to their engineers). This resulted in me losing days of work and my stress levels flying through the roof into lunar orbit.



I wished I could have stepped into Michael Douglas's shoes in Falling Down and had my way with the bunch of liars who comprise most of BT's customer 'service' department. I have never been lied to and patronised as much as I have by BT. I detest that company. Oh, and the man I spoke to at their press office is a small-minded, sarcastic scrote. I shall get him back good and proper, a cold dish served right in his face. Cannot wait.

Then, they did it again. Oops! Yes, the fuckers cut me off yesterday, leaving me in tears as I faced another three days without email or a telephone. They don't give a damn about the effects that their ineptness and incompetence causes – I think they rather enjoy it. Bastards. Luckily, I collared an engineer outside in the street and forced him to try to sort it out. I was fortunate – he was a great chap and obliged, and within two hours, I was back online and with a phone line that worked. He was, after all, a contractor and not a BT employee. If he had been a member of the BT sub-species, he'd have come out with a robotic response and forced me to pull his plug out, so to speak.

As for c). Hmm, well, out of curiosity, this afternoon I went to see a house nearby (not nice) and asked the estate agent to come back and value this place. We aren't thinking of moving (unless our dream home appears) and just wanted an idea of what we could get if we did wish to sell up.

The woman, however, was very familiar and kept telling me how I looked like her younger sister (is that a sales technique?!). Then, she took two phone calls interspersed with: "I keep wanting to tell you off, you look just like my sister. I can't look at you." I bet her sister wants to slap her silly. I bloody well did. It was hard enough looking at her nicotine-ravaged features. She repeated (again... yawn...) that she felt she wanted to tell me off as I showed her the door, so I told her, quite pleasantly (I'm far too nice), that I'd go elsewhere if she dared to do anything of the kind. Then – ugh – she pulled me to her Silk Cut-scented scrawny self and attempted to air-kiss me, saying, "Oh, you are just like my sister!" Bleurgh.