the great broadband quest 2006 and other stories;

It felt a little odd going in to work this morning after the longest period of time off I’ve had since this job began, although taking the bus in rather than the train felt like the most natural thing in the world. I’ve managed to catch up pretty easily, I think, and will be ready to get my teeth into the serious business of getting a magazine out there tomorrow.

I haven’t quite caught up with everything after my forced interweb absence, but I made a start over lunchtime with Sky TV’s hold music serenading me through the telephone earpiece. The only real problem I have with my new home is that we don’t have a proper television aerial and instead I’m having to get by with the channels we get for free through the previous occupant’s old Sky box. This means no Channel 4 – a televisual staple – although plenty of late-night channels on which girls jiggle their strange-looking boobs and breathlessly tell you that they’re waiting for your call.

Half an hour later, and still on hold, I gave up. I’m fast discovering that major telecommunication companies’ hold music and new tenants make a frequent if frustrating partnership. I’ve become intimately aquainted with BT’s for example, racking up about fifteen quid of call charges in the process as 0800 numbers aren’t covered by a mobile network’s inclusive minutes. Surely these companies should realise that if people want to register with their service they’re hardly likely to be calling from a landline and so able to take advantage of their freephone numbers?

The company are insisting that they have to send somebody round to install a telephone line in the flat before we can have internet access. Now this isn’t really a problem – despite the fact that we BLATANTLY ALREADY HAVE ONE THEY COULD JUST REACTIVATE – I’m more annoyed that although the Twin and I have been in the flat for the past week and would have been more than happy to let somebody in, in order to laugh in their faces when we pointed out the existing cabling. Providing they didn’t interupt our regular afternoon viewing of reruns of the Jeremy Kyle Show, obviously.

Sadly it was not to be. Guess when the earliest they could send somebody round was?

The 15th. And no, they wouldn’t tell me if it would be morning or afternoon.

So, new customers are not to be expected to have a job with which to pay for little things like phone lines and broadband packages either.

Meh.

It’s been really great having Lyndsay around to keep me company in these first few days – you can’t help but be nervous when you’re meeting somebody who’s been an important part of your life for as many years as she has for the first time but we soon found we could whisper secrets to each other in the dark as easily as we can in our monthly mammoth emails. The flat is really quiet without her bringing home dodgy men (okay, just my brother) at 2am: although I’ve been listening to lots of loud music and watching bad 9-11 documentaries about how Tariq from Eastenders was to blame for the WTC bombings I feel really alone. Which isn’t a bad thing, because everybody knows how much I love my Lis-time and besides, it’s only for another ten days, but sometimes it scares me how easy it would be for me to get used to the silence and never speak to another human being again. Although I get up to mischief when left to my own devices, and next thing you know I’ve melted half the casing off my iPod with some nail polish remover.

The Cha better get in that little car of hers and come see me soon, that’s all I’m saying, it’ll be the telly next.

I’d love to say that I showed Lyndsay lots of the Glasgow culture while she was here; but I worry that New Look, Asda and “the fuckin’ Kooks, man!” in Viennas don’t really count. We did make it through to Edinburgh to check out an exhibition I’d been really keen to visit however: the photojournalist Harry Benson’s Being There. I’ll confess that it moved me to tears, as the work of the greats so often does when I compare their accomplishments to my own and wonder what the fuck I’m doing, and whether anybody’s ever going to be moved by my writing.

Anyway. Obviously Indian Summer was the focal point of the Twin’s time in Glasgow, but I imagine that it’s already been written about to death by those lucky people who have interweb connections at their command. I think I spotted pretty much everybody I was expecting to see there, along with a couple I wasn’t including one of my Proper Grown-Up Friends from the World of Work. Broken Social Scene, the Guillemots and the GDP of a small nations’ worth of organic strawberries were the undoubted and unsurprising highlights of the weekend, with Tilly and the Wall also making me smile despite the rain – I reckon every band should look at replacing their drum kit with a tap dancer really. Of the bands I wasn’t already that familiar with Tapes ‘n Tapes were also pretty good, sounding much more inspiring than those MP3s you snagged off Pitchfork (sorry, a little below the belt I know…). Lowlights: well my cold I guess, and a particularly uninspiring set from Camera Obscura, a band who have more than enough brilliant songs to fill a set but sadly didn’t choose to play them.

Damn my uninternetted state – you let your attention wander and Arab Strap go and split up.