Bad day blues
Before sleep gathers me in its warm embrace I like to ponder on my day.
Did I achieve all I wanted? What went wrong and why? What was the high point, what was the low point?
Last night I reflected on a bad day …
The initial problem I had to confront was that my iPad – my main vehicle of communication – had neither tuned into the WiFi nor received any email communication since Saturday.
As if coming out in sympathy, my mobile’s reception of email had also defaulted.
I tried the age old remedy for both: switching off and rebooting. Still the same. The WiFi logo was there in the setting, the router had the three magic 3 lights of operation, but no WiFi.
Second up was an overdue trip to the foreign exchange booth of the supermarket in the complex where I live.
My dollars were exchanged without difficulty but I counted eight times the yen were placed under a small machine with a widening frown from the teller. She explained this machine certified validity but “No offence to you, I was passed £40 of duds last week. “
After 15 minutes or so I suggested she returned the notes to me which I exchanged in a shop in a secondary shopping street without problem.
Third up was a fight on Saturday night between youths near the pier.
Two made off when the police were called and ran over two bystanders now critically ill in hospital. Such an event does not attract national publicity as it’s not a terrorist one and did not take place in London but one of the consequences was to close the equivalent of Trafalgar Square for forensics bringing traffic in the city to a gridlock.
To sort out my iPad I decided to walk but I had first to drop off my cat at the cattery.
This is the nearest I get to that act of parental cruelty – leaving your child in a boarding school.
Things have hopefully much improved but my vivid impression of the sixties is of the tearful son/daughter watching his parents’ 2.2 Jaguar recede through the school gates from the view point of a curtainless dormitory in a turret and knowing that the paedophile geography teacher, sadistic head of house and school bully all lie in wait.
Fortunately my cat blessed as he is with good looks and an affectionate personality is already much loved in the cattery.
But its still a journey that neither he nor I enjoy.
Next the Apple Store, a parallel world of nerdish assistants which also I don’t enjoy or understand.
I sat for some 10 minutes at the Genius Bar as various assistants dressed in red rushed by.
I managed to stop one who said I must book an appointment.
However, he then took an interest in my iPad and diagnosed the problem.
This was that the Nord VPN subscription had lapsed. This is a useful device enabling you to switch the country to wherever – so, for example, when outside the UK you can switch to UK and see programmes blocked as you are abroad.
The subscription had lapsed as they took it from a bank card which – for reasons best known to themselves – the bank had cancelled and then issued a new one.
The net result of all of this was to block emails and WiFi until disabled.
This proved no easy matter as the VPN button would not switch off.
Eventually we deleted it altogether which also seems to have eliminated all the retained information on the iPad.
We are not so much internet-dependent as forced into it (every phone call to a service provider advises you that would be much easier to go online) so without it you are paralysed.
Before sleep grabbed me I wondered how much of this might be avoided in the future. Nix
