I lost the internet, or the internet lost me. Whatever it was, it was like 1994 again. For a few days I was unnerved. No instant news! No Stumble!-ing!

And I had no TV either. Somehow Virgin Media managed to lose all digital signals to my flat. The wires were there, the appropriate boxes, electricity even. But no 1010101001100s. Ten calls to Virgin's customer care line resulted in nothing except conflicting advice and empty promises.

After two weeks I wrote a letter of complaint. And magically one week later all services came back. "Well," I thought, "it pays to make formal written complaints."

That is, until another 5 days later when I received a written responses from Virgin's complaints department, which said, "Sorry to hear you've lost your services. We'll contact you sometime in the next two weeks to figure out what's gone wrong."

So not only did they lose my services, they also got them back without knowing how, and didn't even know about it.

Not very good service at all.

I am getting decorators in. This isn't a metaphor or a polite way of saying that I'm about to menstruate (which would be biologically bizarre). No, I'm being middle class and getting other people to do work that I'm unable and unwilling to do. Plastering, woodwork, small scale masonry. Goodbye savings, hello easy life. I've had some interesting reactions to this from various people. "Ooh, you should get professionals to do it, otherwise it'll cost more to fix your mistakes." "What? I can't believe you're wasting your money. Learn to do it yourself, be a man!" And so on and so forth.

Things to be pleased about:

The Mighty Boosh is back
I've found my copy Atonement
I found a copy of a Rene Descartes book at a bus stop, which I'm reading now, and will release back into the wild when I've finished
The Golden Compass (nee Northern Lights) is out at the cinema soon
Scrabulous on Facebook
I am going on holiday soon