BT incompetence

Thursday afternoon I took my work laptop into the Motorpoint office and set it up. The BT broadband link was quickly up and running, along with an email requiring urgent attention. We were less fortunate with the phone connection, running on the same line however. It came and went several times - rather unusual, the man on the help line thought - somebody in the Stadium House telephone exchange not far away, was messing with something they shouldn't have been. We had two BT Open Reach engineers visit within half an hour of each other, neither knowing of the other's assignment. Although the line was declared fully operational, no incoming or outgoing calls were possible from the land-line soon after the second one left. But thankfully the broadband stayed running. 

Today I took the car into town with files I had been safeguarding at home, and then we shuttled the heavy network laser printer and smaller items of furniture which hadn't yet been collected, across to the new office. It'll take a while to sort everything out, but I have my important stuff where it should be, under lock and key. More than a dozen people are working in the new office. It's twice as large as the second floor of Charles Street. Our workspace is about the same size. It has a door on to the balcony opposite, for fresh air, vital in so warm an environment, and the kitchen is next to us.

Some time during the day, the facility for call divert to Ashley's mobile was switched off, robbing our clientèle of a vital lifeline for hours. He spent hours on another phone complaining, arguing with a succession of call centre operatives to get the service re-instated immediately. CBS pays British Telecom for the highest standard of service as a business client to ensure things like this don't happen during a move, to avoid  any impact on the service we provide. What a mess.

I returned at five, to cook an early meal, then go to Ely to visit a bereaved family and prepare a funeral for the elderly mother of seven children. She had brought them up single handed after her husband deserted her, and what a lively happy bunch they were, so proud and appreciative of their Mama, who'd raised them to make the most of their lives and support each other, with a great imagination and little education. She'd lived in the same house for fifty three years - where she'd moved after her Bute-town birthplace home was demolished for redevelopment. How very precious is the stability and constancy brought to home and family life by generations of working class mothers in a century of great upheavals.

After the visit, we went to Chapter Arts for a late showing of 'War Horse'. Well worth the acclaim it's had, though I didn't think much of the over saturated colour rendering of the film, and un-natural natural lighting. If it was intended for theatrical effect, it wasn't a success, to my mind, as it made some scenes look contrived, like the film sets they probably were.